Louisiana Literature Press is proud to announce the publication of Kip Knott’s prose chapbook, Family Haunts.
The book is currently available for purchase through our press store (Please remember to specify title and author when submitting payment via PayPal.). The book will also be listed on Amazon.com in the near future.
From Family Haunts
But the fact is, there are times when Sam feels burdened by the truth that he has kept from everyone ever since he saw it in the dark of that freezer he climbed into all those years ago. Sam has carried that truth with him just as he carries his own shadow, something everyone can see, but something no one ever acknowledges. If anyone ever bothered to really ask Sam what the truth is, he would have to think long and hard about what to say, even though he knows no one would believe him. Sam learned a long time ago that people would rather cling a kind of blind faith in anything, just as long as it wasn’t the truth.
Like Sam’s mother, who, even this close to death herself, would rather turn a blind eye to the truth.
“What is it you’re not tell me?” she asks as Sam sits next to her bed. The last rays of sunset flicker through the window and across the ceiling for a moment, and then fade to nothing.
Not wanting the last words he would every speak to his mother to be a lie, Sam takes her hand and leans close to her so she can hear him whisper, “Nothing, Mom. It’s. . . It’s just nothing.”
“Nothing? Are you sure?”
“I’m sure, Mom. Really. It’s nothing.”
But as Sam’s mother looks into her son’s eyes for the last time, she sees the familiar streaks of blues and greens and flecks of gold that belong in part to her, in part to Sam’s father, and in part to her mother and father, and all the mothers and fathers who came before them. And as she exhales her soft final breath, she knows for certain that there is something more than nothing waiting for her on the other side.
About Our Author
Kip Knott is a 7th generation Appalachian born and raised in Ohio. He is the author of eleven collections of poetry and one full-length collection of stories. His writing and photography have appeared in Barren, Beloit Fiction Journal, Best Microfiction, Gettysburg Review, The Greensboro Review, Poet Lore, The Sun, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Wigleaf Top 50. His writing has been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, and he is the recipient of grants from the Ohio Arts Council for both poetry and playwriting. Currently, he is a teacher, photographer, and part-time art dealer who spends his free time traveling throughout Appalachia and the Midwest taking photographs and searching for lost art treasures.