Hillbilly Drug Baby: The Poems
by Jesse-Ray Lewis
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Pub Date May 01 2018 | Archive Date Jun 01 2018
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Description
to see if he wanted to raise his twelve-year-old son he couldn’t pass the simple test
of not having needles strewn all over the floor.
The words are sometimes harsh and the visualizations raw, but so is reality for Jesse-Ray Lewis. He grew up in Appalachia surrounded by violence, drug dealing, and addiction.
I held her for hours.
There was foam at her mouth
and blood as I cradled her.
I am the one who closed her eyes.
He entered foster care at age 12 and aged out of the system in 2016 at age 18.
I thought, I want that.
I want to live without walking
from nowhere to nowhere.
His poems rise up out of that shattered childhood as a quest for answers and a search for a new beginning.
Hillbilly drug baby? Maybe that’s who I came out as.
But it’s not who I want to be.
In these poems, you see a young man on a precipice, wooed by drugs and forgetfulness, but longing for something bigger and better.
I find a single droplet of hope
and choke on it.
" Unafraid, he probes our deepest fears---what would it be like to live that life? To plumb the depths of hell?" - Saundra Kelley, author of Southern Appalachian Storytellers
A Note From the Publisher
This is the first book in the Hillbilly Drug Baby series.
Advance Praise
Raw and righteous, with indignant courage and an original voice, Jesse-Ray Lewis somehow poeticizes the brutal, all-too relevant struggle of a prodigal son in Appalachia. His work is uniquely framed by the horrifying, inspiring biography of a nobody with plenty to say. "Hillbilly Drug Baby: The Poems" is a dispatch from darkest America you won't soon forget. ~Ran Henry, Author of "Spurrier: How the Ball Coach Taught the South to Play Football.
"I come from a cave of broken hearts" is only one line from "Hillbilly Drug Baby: The Poems, but it reveals much of what is to be found in this book of poetry. From raw pain to poignant reflection, poet Jesse-Ray Lewis plumbs the depths of despair with his words. Drawing them with a pen dipped in his own life's blood, he reveals glimmers of light and hope in the darkest of places. . . ~Saundra Kelley, Author of "Southern Appalachian Storytellers" and "The Day the Mirror Cried."
Available Editions
| EDITION | Ebook |
| ISBN | 9781608081943 |
| PRICE | $5.99 (USD) |
