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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The music venues that were spared have opened their doors again. I dial the number of a friend to arrange to meet at the hall at the end of the boardwalk. There’s a concert later: four acts, each renowned. It’s important to arrive there early to avoid the crowds, though I might be overthinking the whole thing. As of this date, the death toll has surpassed one million, and most people aren’t that willing to take the risk. It’s safer to catch a stream. A woman picks up, and I leave a message with her. It’s loud, and the connection is poor. She speaks with a foreign accent. People are driving mechanized vehicles on the wood or composite wood. No one has any respect anymore. Nonsense.…
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Where did we sleep before time betrayed us and I learned to carry my grief
like a carapace
under
which I sometimes shelter? Years ago, those boys slipped into the tortoise shell
wearing yellow slickers
sleek
with sweat and island rain. Lemon laughter resonated through the space
and likely loops,
lingers
there trapped in a layered, timeless echo. They were our flock
of flightless cormorants,
tea
stained and dolphin dizzy as they traipsed across the rocking decks at night
and boogied bare-
foot
among the blue footed boobies by day. On an icy glacier they spied the Cotopaxi
Andean slinky fox
search
for a meal amongst the snowbound rocks and volcanic black. The intrepid young travelers
leaned into stories
spun…
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Juan was determined to get it right, but by the looks of things, he wasn’t doing a very good job of that. He was lying in the bed of a woman who wasn’t his wife, trying to figure out how he’d allowed himself to end up in this position again after promising himself that he would give up this lifestyle. The girl he’d just slept with was in the bathroom cleaning up, and Juan took this as a prime opportunity to escape before he was forced to look at her again, which he didn’t want to do, because instead of seeing her face he’d see his wife and his two daughters staring back at him and making him feel lower than a mongrel. Lower than a rat, even.…
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The stars are pretty. I guess. “Sundown” by Gordon Lightfoot is lovely. I suppose. I’m sitting here on top of Dad’s car, looking up at the stars, on the side of a street that passes my old high school on a cold September night. I look up in the skies and wonder if Jair can see me. I wonder if he’s smiling at me, or if he’s concerned that I stole Dad’s car to come out here while having an emotional crisis. Jair Cruz was my brother. Ever since he was eight years old, this cop had come to school to tell us the importance of listening to our parents and not joining gangs. Jair wanted to be a cop. After much training and patience, he graduated from the police academy back in 2016.…
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