Rare rear view of the back of Knoxville-born author James Agee’s now-demolished childhood home at 1505 Highland Ave in Fort Sanders, Knoxville, Tennessee, August or September 1962. From the Fleming Reeder Collection
Strolling Highland to Thirteenth,
the empty street narrows into
a scorched cul-de-sac where
late summer asphalt—
a tar-skinned dragon—
exhales rippled specters
of gasoline ghosts.
Kudzu-strangled houses,
prop against each other,
folding under
angry
humidity.
Porch planks sag, scarcely
hold beneath duct-taped
thrift chairs, rusted grills,
and expired beer kegs.
Early lightning bugs
spark and smolder in the
shade of poplar and oak, then
shelter beneath a cool leaf.
I tread the white line,
parting the street—blistering pitch
chewing my shoes
like a blue tick hound on a cattle bone.
Not tilting to either side—
one misstep, and I’m a
cockroach
in a glue trap.
A garden emerges in the jungle
of green, through the hedges:
a cluster of pink flowers flows and
shifts—forming a girl in a magenta
T-shirt, solitary on a porch, book open
in her lap, eyes downward, unaware
of me. The page in her fingers
turns, and she sinks deeper into her tale.
I pass on tiptoe, melting quieter.
The garden calls me
and I waver, saunter down
the walkway without stealth or plan,
extending my hand toward her.
Looking up for the first time,
she gently places small fingers
into my palm
and rises.
The chair tosses foam like confetti
as I force a smile, fake coolness—
her glasses throwing a rainbow
across my shirt.
I spin her, pull her closer—
my hand settling at the small
of her back. Stepping in,
her cheek presses to my chest,
coconut hair warming my face.
Like two gray squirrels
chasing up a tree, we move without
speaking, swaying instead to music
from a Cumberland tavern
wafting up the hill.
I start to move away, but she
pulls me closer, holds tight.
Tears fall to the concrete—
there is wine on her breath
and I wonder if she will remember
this moment tomorrow.
A breeze cuts in, flips the page
of her book, then closes it.
Misty eyes lift to me, her hand
sweeping beads from my brow.
I touch her lips softly with mine—
an awkward kiss. I taste muscadine
and World Literature and can
no longer hear music.
She attempts a whispered word over traffic
roar, but I quickly raise a hand.
“Shhhh. I have to go before I get towed.”
I bow and kiss her wrist.
She sighs and returns to her book—
not looking back as I retreat to the
sidewalk toward my car.
I step in gum.
Hot pink strings stretch
like sticky paper streamers from a
front-page Sequoia Hills wedding.
At the crest of Ft. Sanders, the city is
reflected in mirrored panes of a giant
gold ball. Broken lines and
a ghostly monarch
lead me toward a forest green
Datsun. I drive the painted lines,
wavering and unsure—
swerving first to the right,
then to the left,
eyes held tightly
on the road.
•••
A note on the poem
This isn’t a poem about romance.
I was more curious about what happens when two people, each burdened by their own worries, momentarily set them aside. Their connection only works because it doesn’t have a future. It exists precisely because it won’t continue. There’s a kind of freedom in that, a moment where nothing needs to be explained, continued, or resolved.
I grew up in Knoxville, and I think of this poem as my love letter to that city. The title also pays homage to James Agee, whose work has always felt connected to Knoxville’s emotional landscape.
The heat in the poem is more than just Southern summer. It’s the pressure each of them carries—anxiety, loneliness, whatever they’ve brought with them into that moment. The dance becomes a kind of release from that pressure. It isn’t a solution, just a pause from life.
The connection between them isn’t about desire. It’s closer to recognition. For a moment, they allow each other to exist without expectation or judgment. The kiss is part of that. It isn’t a beginning, it isn’t sexual, just a brief letting go.
When he stops her from speaking, it isn’t meant as control so much as restraint. If the moment continues, if it turns into conversation, into plans, into something with a future, then the pressure returns. The moment only works because it remains incomplete.
I’ve always been drawn to these small, temporary releases. Not resolution, not transformation—just a crack in the surface where something softer can appear for a second. Like a small plant bursting through the concrete. A dance, a shared silence, a brief sense that nothing needs to be carried forward.
And then, as it always does, everything resumes.