Night
She says she has been herself. How everything She has tears in her eyes she she isn’t lying. I think of around the Botanical Gardens the night. There was an statues, painted in crazy colors. with the bright yellow spots all climbing” sign. Jumping on around it with the biggest smile. a photo. I put the camera anyway. Walking home she obstacles she had already faced, never gave up. A smile formed on thinking about? she said. I said, looking at her tears: Mini-interview with Brenton Booth HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)? BB: When I was 19 I worked 50-hour weeks as a security guard in a cosmetics factory: 60 when they got a big shipment. I wasn’t doing well, was really struggling for a reason to keep going. After work one afternoon, I went to Chinatown to have dinner. I parked a few streets away in the free parking area and walked. On the way, I noticed an underground bookstore. I’d never read books before but decided to have a look. It was well stocked. I made the decision to buy a book from every section. A few days later I finished Chekhov’s The Seagull. Everything changed that day. HFR: What are you reading? BB: Currently reading Jack London’s Tales of the Pacific. Recently finished Steinbeck’s Cannery Row and Salinger’s Franny and Zooey. I read a lot of literary journals. My good friend Tony Gloeggler gave me a bunch of old New York Quarterlys I have been getting through. As far as living writers Catfish McDaris, Wolfgang Carstens, Matt Borczon, and of course Tony Gloeggler are some favorites. Favorite authors are Anton Chekhov, Maxim Gorky, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Knut Hamsun, Voltaire, Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka, Henry Miller, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, John Fante, Dan Fante, John Cheever, and Charles Bukowski. HFR: Can you tell us what prompted “Night”? BB: I will let the poem speak for itself. HFR: What’s next? What are you working on? BB: I am always writing new poems. Finished a one-act play a few months back called “The Patron Saint” that I am shopping around now. Have way too many submissions out there. Been getting killed with rejections. Had a good run of acceptances the past few weeks though. And super grateful to have work in Heavy Feather Review. HFR: Take the floor. Be political. Be fanatical. Be anything. What do you want to share? BB: I have always been best at communicating through art. I guess that is what attracted me to writing in the first place. Everything I know that is worth saying comes out sooner or later in my writing. For anyone that wants to read more of my work my most recent collection Bash the Keys Until They Scream is available from Epic Rites Press. Thanks for the interview. Brenton Booth lives in Sydney, Australia. Poetry of his has appeared in New York Quarterly, Chiron Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Main Street Rag, Naugatuck River Review, Van Gogh’s Ear, and Nerve Cowboy. He has two full-length collections available from Epic Rites Press. More: brentonbooth.weebly.com. Check out HFR’s book catalog, publicity list, submission manager, and buy merch from our Spring store. Follow us on Instagram and YouTube. Disclosure: HFR is an affiliate of Bookshop.org and we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Sales from Bookshop.org help support independent bookstores and small presses.
thinking a lot about killing
would be much easier then.
can’t control, I know
our first date. Wandering
just before it closed for
exhibition of large koala
She liked the purple one
over it. Ignoring the “no
its back, wrapping her arms
She wouldn’t let me take
away, knowing I’d never forget
told me her dreams, the many
how no matter what, she
my face. What are you
Something you once told me,
hoping she’d remember too.
Heavy Feather Review 