In the year of my birth, a mammal preserved in amber
was identified by scientists for the first time.
When they spoke of its age, the scientists broadly estimated
18 million to 29 million years—referring, of course, to the age
of the fossil itself. What I’m curious about is
how long the tiny mammal lived, how much time was cut short
when it fell indelibly into the resin. There’s simply
no way to know. I know that in hindsight
its lifespan seems ludicrously insignificant.
An eon spent in amber turns the time before
preservation into something like prehistory,
like a half-life, or less.
– Leah Schwartz…
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Back in the waning years of the last millennium when pages were turned, books were read, and people gathered together in real space and time for socially un-distanced discussions, my literary path to demise began. As common with most closely kept confessions, this is not something I discuss openly with my literati buddies.
I would like to blame it on the likes of Susan Sontag, Katha Pollitt, even Carolyn Forché and other enlightened writers but that would be tremendously unfair to them. Clearly, I had the rotten luck of stumbling into a highly actualized group of readers during a time when I had barely enough wherewithal to find a suitable clean, dry blouse to wear. Having given birth to my second baby within two years only a week previous, I agreed to join my gracious neighbor Nancy’s book club meeting at her house one dark Midwestern winter evening.…
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After swapping inner voices with me, all you say is, “Everything is so much softer.”
Which I take to mean quieter and gentler—the kind of change you were hoping for.
Then, all smiles and bright eyes, you thank me and head off to take care of other Saturday plans. I linger on the park bench, to get Aeterna’s take on the new arrangement.
“Thanks for helping out,” I think to her, using her voice as we agreed I would. “How does it feel so far?”
“Like I’m hearing myself or who I once was,” she answers in my mind with your inner voice. “How do I sound?”
“Firm,” I answer. “Like bark—tough and furrowed.”
“I hope it’s just bark and no bite,” she quips—though only half successfully with your inner voice dampening her usual levity to a low-key seriousness.…
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I’d left several phone messages but apparently, my godfather didn’t care to connect.
He lived in the Midwest, where he and my father had grown up and joined the service together, but after my baptism at old St. Pius, which I don’t remember, he dropped out of Dad’s life. According to Dad. Now, Dad had died. I thought Bill, my godfather, should know, and I wanted to tell him in person. And meet him for the first time.
I drove a thousand miles back to my birthplace. There I staked out the humble brick home where Bill and his wife, Frannie (who was not my godmother), had lived their entire adult lives.
It was a summer evening with cicadas roaring in the humid trees like evacuation traffic.…
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The day before school started Gina told us about her brother
taking two buses to seventh grade. His balled-up angry fists
got expelled last year right before the first graders taped
their turkey hand prints against the classroom glass.
The principal told her mother that there wasn’t room
in his small brick building for anger that large. He probably
looked down at his shoes when he said it. He told
Gina’s mother that her son hurled chairs onto desks,
pounded fists through closed doors. That her son needed
a school with bars on the window. Gina’s mother studied
the route that would take him twelve blocks and a climb
up a steep hill. The second bus would drop him across
from a gas station and a dirty park. …
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“John’s at the prison today, working with the dogs.”
“Oh,” I said, looking up from the table at the motionless ceiling fan. “Okay.”
“Only two weeks til he’s done.”
“That’s great,” I said. “Wow, that’s great.”
Mom looked at me over the lip of her glass as she drained it. “It’s a promotion, Adam,” she said when she’d finished. The glass thudded dully on the coaster and she returned to her sewing. “It’s a promotion.”
“What?”
“Don’t do that,” she said. “It actually is great. It’s going to be great for him.”
“Isn’t that what I said?”
She didn’t answer and I watched her pale fingers work a needle through some fabric she’d stretched over a small hoop.
The phone rang from the living room and I pushed back in my chair, but she shook her head.…
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Matty Bennett’s debut poetry collection, What Are The Men Writing in the Sugar?, was published by Rebel Satori Press last April. His poems have appeared in Juked, Watershed Review, Cardiff Review, and many other journals. He earned his MFA in poetry from Virginia Tech. Currently, he works as a high school ESL English teacher and coach in Providence, RI.
In this episode of Cover to Cover with . . ., Bennett chats with Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum about his writing; his life as a student and teacher; and much more.
– Matty Bennett…
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