The Milk House
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Welcome to The Milk House, a rural writing collective. From The Milk House column, to the work of guest writers, the site features writing that explores what it means to be from the countryside.
The Milk House
4d ago
It’s more than a little astonishing to look at a fresh new calendar in a fresh new year and realize that I’m staring down 40 years since one of the most memorable summers of my life.
I spent that summer, 1984, in Moriarty, New Mexico, which sits about forty miles east of Albuquerque. I was living with my dad and his then-wife, with whom he was at the tail end of a second go-round at marriage. (Marital follies, more for the record than for making fun: They’d originally wed in 1975, when I was five years old, then divorced four years later. The precipitating event was an argument after she had a ..read more
The Milk House
6d ago
The Rural Literature Book Club is meeting online for the fourth time on April 28th, 2024, 8pm GMT/ 3pm EST. Join people from all over the world to discuss Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver.
About the Rural Literature Book Club
You can join the Rural Literature Book Club here, or email RyanDennis@themilkhouse.org to receive the Zoom link.
The conversation is friendly, inclusive and insightful, and generally lasts about an hour. The group meets online three to four times a year.
Previously discussed books include The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, All ..read more
The Milk House
1w ago
Circa 1900
Waldo sharpened the blades
of his turn-of-the-last-century sled
and slid
Downhill at age eighty-four.
His wife chided him, “Old fool!”
It jades,
The spirit, with the practicality
survival crams into an aging head.
What more
Can it do to the slat-and-metal tool
discovered in inanity hid?
Pity
So many slide into dead
in hours made days; days, decades—
done did.
December Branches
Time must loathe green eyes
————————-that look at the earth
and see through its lies the verdant reflected
——-where there is none.
And Time must wear white hair
————————-it shakes out when
the green tha ..read more
The Milk House
1w ago
The post On My Love of the Country Life by Sydney Lea appeared first on The Milk House ..read more
The Milk House
1w ago
The post This Work is Done by Jonathan Humble appeared first on The Milk House ..read more
The Milk House
2w ago
My Uncle’s Farm
I recollect particulars by the dozen,
But late in life I yearn
to shift the sensory into some higher realm.
I dream this would make the life whole.
Everything, however, resists translation
from quiddity: whiff of the barn
all year; long shadows of cornstalks, summer receding;
spring pastures pocked by woodchucks;
airborne crystals of frost at dawn; in autumn,
an owl high up in the loft;
the landscape’s dells and hollows, each familiar
to me as any playmate.
All these, all right, but what do they validate?
I could point out even today
which pine in winter refracts the looming mo ..read more
The Milk House
3w ago
Paul: Looks like some kids have messed up the book box again. Any ideas who?
Michelle: @Trish Jones – your boys?
Trish: dnt look at me michelle, theyve been at home all day
Jan has sent an image
Jan: 45 clean jam jars free to a good home
***
When I moved in with John, my father gave me a bird feeder.
“Because you have a garden now,” he explained proudly.
I remember this when I find the feeder wrapped up in a bag-for-life.
We live in a small terrace cottage within a hamlet that really has no business even existing. The week before I moved, my friend Carol showed me a regional ..read more
The Milk House
1M ago
Neil knew he should be the one to start the neighbour’s combining this year. At seventy-nine, his father’s neck is too arthritic, his reflexes too slow to handle big equipment safely. Especially on the road where newcomers race from their new houses in small towns, back to the city from which they escaped. When he told him, Neil’s dad had looked past him and said nothing. But he nodded. Neil is sure of that.
Still, when he walks behind the equipment shed this morning, Neil is not surprised at what he finds. The combine is gone. So is his dad.
Damn. Neil shakes his head, feeling a twinge in his ..read more
The Milk House
1M ago
Him and the Dog
She stands birching
Towards river
Black metal liquid
Sweating paper Southeast
Her pepper white skin flapping
Cinnamon into the wind
The insects detour the trail of deterrent
Caught on a different path
Antennae tangle with confusion
Their multiple facet eyes
Cast diamond suns, garnet imaginings
To the dog panting on the porch
Its lapping lazy tongue sinks cool
Into slobber water
Splashes the bare soles of the gray beard
Rusted owner
Tin stone he sits heavy
A monument, a broomstick used well
He is dreaming of the river
The current of summer sound
Rising like a swelling orchestra ..read more
The Milk House
1M ago
As the sun began to top the trees, you could tell today would be another scorcher. One of the hottest days of the summer so far from the feel of it. Even back in the woods, shaded where we were, I had already started sweating like hell through my shirt. Travis and I walked with our fishing rods out in front of us to knock down any spider webs we might come across. The brush was thick, fallen trees everywhere, a half-ass path worn through it all on account of us having walked to the pond just about every day since the start of summer. The pond was only about a half-mile through the woods from w ..read more