28065 Nights, a review

Sometimes I look down at my hands and I see yours kneading the dough. I would choose this if I had a choice.

The prose poems in Kate Manning’s collection, 28065 Nights, written for her deceased grandmother, Wanda Faye Henson, are rich and evocative snapshots. The title refers to how much love accumulates in 76 years on this earth. How much love? A whole lot. 

Titles are invitations. Scan the table of contents in this collection–“Your Death Explained in Birds,” “How to Use Vanilla,” “How I Measure Your Body,” “I Haven’t Eaten Fried Bologna Since You Died,” “I Sniff Your Socks,” “I Wore Your Pink Shirt Today”–and you’ll want to dive in.

In “I Was Afraid It Would Be Empty” Manning describes a notebook she gave her grandmother as a Mother’s Day gift, with a request that she write about her life, so that the stories of her grandmother’s youth, which Manning had heard recited, could be captured and collected. Finding the notebook after her grandmother’s death, Manning observes that it was blank, that “the first page was torn away.” And so begins, in real time, the task of writing down the stories her grandmother could not find the words for.

Some of the stories are funny, like how her granny’s panties saved her; some difficult, like the memory of a lost baby and Manning’s realization that she never asked her grandmother the baby’s name (Thomas Anthony). Throughout there are references to objects charged with meaning and her grandmother’s body of work. “Your body of work is other people’s bodies: children who made children who are still making more children. You built these bodies with bread and beans…your body replicates itself in brand new bodies–your nose, your feet, your rogue blond head in a family of brown.”

The theme of how one life echoes another plays out. Also the theme of renewal. Manning holds a newborn nephew at her grandmother’s funeral, “my body swaying to keep from falling, his body so small and so new.” These are loving acts, loving words. Reader, you will be touched.    

Published by River Glass Books.