Whispers
I gave away our old clothes
dryer for free a few hours
earlier to a young happy couple.
Carefully helping them load it
inside their sleek new metallic gray
van. Remembering the day we
first bought it. You delicately
stroking its clear unblemished
door like a newborn child
in the light freshly renovated
bathroom of our just rented
seventh-floor city apartment.
Feeling nothing but total
optimism for the bright certain
future ahead. Overhearing
you gently whispering to it from
the lush, carpeted stairwell
later on that night following dinner:
thoroughly convinced we would
last forever. Over a year
has passed since our long ugly
breakup. Eyeing the content
young couple steering a perfect
line withing the gorgeous summer
brightness. Looking at the dull
empty spot where the dryer used to
be, gently whispering, “Good Luck.”
Mini-interview with Brenton Booth
HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)?
BB: Marlon Brando’s acting teacher, Stella Adler, said to him in his early twenties: “Acting is about telling the truth, we need to find the truth inside ourselves, and tell it.” I started out acting at nineteen, rather than writing. I didn’t think I was intelligent enough to be a writer, so I studied acting instead. My favorite actor was Marlon Brando. And that lesson from Stella Adler has always stayed with me. I applied it to writing. I am constantly trying to get a clearer picture of the truth within myself, and accurately document that in my work: a lifelong goal, I will never perfectly achieve.
HFR: What are you reading?
BB: I have been reading a lot lately. Just finished Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, which I didn’t care much for, other than brief passages. I found Anaïs Nin’s A Spy in the House of Love interesting, with some very strong writing. Jack London’s The Sea Wolf really impressed me, as did Herman Melville’s Moby Dick: both works of great scope and importance. I am about to start Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. I have read most of his other books. My favorites are: The Death of Ivan Ilyich, The Kreutzer Sonata, and Confession. I just purchased the great Tony Gloeggler’s new poetry collection Here on Earth, which I am really looking forward to reading. Lastly, Bunkong Tuon’s And So I Was Blessed and Mather Schneider’s Rhythm and Mucous.
HFR: Can you tell us what prompted “Whispers”?
BB: This poem was a photograph. A photograph I wish was never there to be taken. I wrote it about half an hour after I gave away the dryer, sitting in my writing chair, drowning in memories.
HFR: What’s next? What are you working on?
BB: I have a story scheduled for the upcoming Chiron Review. Also poems in New York Quarterly, Main Street Rag, New Pop Lit, and Crossroads Magazine. I am working on a new collection of stories and poems, Variations in the Key of Loss, with John Patrick Robbins of Whiskey City Press, which is coming along really good, and should be available by the time this interview is published.
HFR: Take the floor. Be political. Be fanatical. Be anything. What do you want to share?
BB: I’d like to thank everyone that has read this far. And everyone that reads my writing. I am a self taught writer, who fell in love with writing at nineteen after reading Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull. I’d never previously read a book, and the effect of that first book has always stayed with me. My hope is that something I write will have a similar effect some day. Regardless, writing keeps me honest, gives me purpose, and has gotten me through a really tough few years. Stay strong. Keep writing. Always be yourselves.
Brenton Booth is a writer residing in Sydney, Australia. A multiple time Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee whose work has appeared in hundreds of publications over the past decade, including New York Quarterly, Midwest Quarterly, and North Dakota Quarterly, among others. His latest collection, Variations in the Key of Loss (Whiskey City Press) is available from all good book sites.
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Heavy Feather Review 