Red Dirt Boy

Red Dirt Boy is a collection of Southern-fried, beer-soaked poetry with a tent revival flair. John Hartness draws on years of living in the rural south to share the laughter, tears, heartaches and fears of living, loving and drinking in the modern American South. Hartness vacillates between the profane and the profound in this collection, tackling cancer, drug abuse, strippers and young love with equal parts pathos and humor. Red Dirt Boy is recommended for anyone with a love of Johnny Cash, Steve Earl, moonshine and fried chicken. From the book: Chelsea (for Gina) I don’t see him dragging a stolen Food Lion grocery cart uphill loaded down with a hot water heater and cans picked up off the side of the road heading for the recycling center hoping for just enough to get another bottle of get me through the night. I don’t see her pay for a corn dog and courtesy cup of ice with pennies and haul the seven mismatched garbage bags that make up her whole world out into the heat of the August afternoon. I don’t see him sitting in the rain mumbling at nothing and carving names into his wiry limbs with a rusty jacknife while his own blood drips pink and runs off down the sidewalk, puddling for a second around my Ecco loafers. But I see you kneeling in front of a wild-eyed Walt Whitman madman to say “hey man, you alright?” I look at you in your duct-taped Doc Martens thrift-store Dickie’s work shirt maybe a dollar and a half in your own pocket while you kneel on the wet concrete to touch the face of a stranger and for a minute before the world washes my vision away again I see