Perfect Dirt

Keegan Lester is the author of this shouldn't be beautiful but it was and it was all i had so i drew it, selected by Mary Ruefle for the 2016 Slope Editions Book Prize. His writing has been published in Ploughshares, the Boston Review, Cutbank, Hobart, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn among others. He lives in New York City.

part one for all my strangers welch a snapshot cardinals staining the air we breathe shane rooney the way in which wind moves part two tour diary: huntington, west virginia peaches a year later, in philly on writing a book political poem train gravity part three tour diary: alabama grandma christmas is a big deal in my family a few weeks before thanksgiving my dad says ernest my flatbush friends west virginia day part four tour diary: day off in morgantown my grandpa rice tour diary: charleston show sometimes my sister is too good at giving christmas presents tour diary: lewisburg tour diary in the south: putting more heart in our heartbreak there were also readings graduation part five the doldrums when my father got lost at sea i start doing things i normally don't do ain't, ain't a word another thing i wonder about while my father is lost at sea not long ago, i'd gone to a class in west virginia my mother is speaking in a voice, but it's not my mother's voice i don't think he knows how to use his phone one day while i was on tour, my friend bryan, who's super into ghost stories, the occult, metal music, and zines, says father's day home acknowledgments

"Keegan Lester's writing and storytelling about West Virginia and its people feel how West Virginia's landscape feels to me--like I'm being hugged and protected. Perfect Dirt reminds us that we can love a place and still be critical when it's done out of love and tenderness. This book has brought me back home in the best ways, with a newer, more open heart, mind, and body." Steven Dunn, author of water power "Places are fleshed out alongside people, with West Virginia being the book's star. . . . In breathtaking, nuanced prose, Lester tackles the human experience. . . . Powerful and insightful." Foreword Review "Reading Perfect Dirt is like a long, beautiful conversation with a stranger you just met at a backyard barbeque. . . . There's an effervescence of beautiful sentences in this book, an optimism that tugboats you from one scene to the next. . . . His longings remind me of Breece D'J Pancake." Adroit Journal "In Perfect Dirt, tenderness is so tangible, so electric. You feel it when a grandpa hoists a young Keegan Lester up so he can feed wild horses sugar cubes, you hear it when a grandma speaks thunder, it embraces you each time Lester holds close the good people of West Virginia. But this tenderness is also thorny: it sparks in the quiet togetherness of men, it leaps around a father lost at sea, it underscores loss and regret. Keegan Lester is an immensely gifted writer. This book will stay with you." Eduardo C. Corral, author of Guillotine