Heaven's Burning Porch

In Heaven’s Burning Porch, James Dunlap reckons with the legacy left to him: one of pain, gratitude, violence, and salvation. In turns dark, humorous, lyric and narrative, Heaven’s Burning Porch explores what it means to grow up in rural Arkansas under the weight of his rough inheritance.from “A Good Year for Pecans”—Central Arkansas, April The plum trees are wearing their crowns of thorn againand the clouds that hang like shreds of dried tobaccoare sliding away like clots of oil in an empty lake—the persimmon tree, dying in a nest of its own fruit,now ripped in half, now yanked out of socket,its roots like thorns pulled from a muddy paw, no soundbut the green whisper of pine needles raining downfrom the single tree left standing, and I haven’t seenenough of this night to know what it means