The old couple
who housed
tobacco for a century
and a half,
the barns behind the house
fell within two weeks
and fifty feet
of each other.
Their timber frames,
cracked and leaning,
doomed for decades,
gave way on clear nights
while the stars above
listened for the creak
that wood gives
when giving up the ghost.

With the second falling,
wind played no part
and in the bedroom
my heart skipped a beat
when the barn’s tin folded
over the roof of my dreams.
I sat straight up,
thinking of the loom
stored beneath all
those tier posts.

–Jim Lally,
Stick Tight Man (2010)
Accents Publishing

• “Stick Tight Man: An Appreciation” by Matthew Haughton

Jim Lally is a Kentucky poet known for his curly white beard and straggly ponytail. He is a member of the Poets’ Supper, Poezia, and Holler writers’ groups as well as the founding member of Writers at Artcroft. He graduated with a degree in English from Brescia College where he was the editor of the school’s first literary magazine. Jim has been the Spoken Word artist at the Walk for the Arts in Berea for the last two years. He is a partner with his wife, Jennifer Gleason, in the organic farm business of Sunflower Sundries. His poetry ranges from the irregularly scattered to the tangle of the stranglehold.