Dispatch from Every Second Guess
What to make of this daily plate?: divorced mother of two sons (one white, one Black). This life lot?: estranged from her own mother. This dealt hand?: caring for a partner through a mental health crisis. Even as her work takes full measure of misogyny, racism, and injustice. Megan Gannon’s dispatches seethe, shock, and wink at the absurdity of it all. Gannon is a novelist (Cumberland), author of two collections of poetry (White Nightgown was her debut), and associate professor of English at Ripon College in central Wisconsin.
DISPATCH FROM THE MIDDLE DISTANCE
Having survived the wreckage of two marriages,
we arrive at this late morning in middle agebright-eyed and intact. Alive and needing
nothing, we laze the wide, white beach of my bed—this island of found hours—our words
more careful than our mouths. In the silenceof the empty house, we don’t speak
of our children’s grief, of the ways we weren’tenough for our spouses but would have stayed
anyway. We see how we’ve been freed by debris.Here, in the quiet of the workday, your face—
a marvel of lived-life and laugh-lines—hangs for limitless minutes in the air above me.
I trace the cherry blossoms inked on your forearmand a smile blooms between us; I close my eyes
as the sympathetic sun breaks from behind clouds.Someday—later, we will speak of it—we will travel
to Japan, where we can wander through petal-lightand the silence of combed stones, together
in a country where the beauty in brokennessisn’t just an idea, but a bowl mended with gold
we can hold in our hands and lift to our lips.
Reviewed by
Matt Sutherland
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
