Katie Manning’s 28,065 Nights (River Glass Books, 2020) is beautifully both elegy and ode, prose and poetry. Through twenty pages of patient reflection, Manning honors one of the most special people in her life, her Granny. As someone who recently lost her own grandmother, I found these poems remarkably relatable; their emotions ring true and universal. And still, Manning’s chapbook is very much uniquely hers, with honest details and nuance that brilliantly navigate grief and love with grace.

28,065 Nights functions on a steady heartbeat, with each prose poem a neat block on the page and with little variation in form. This safe rhythm allows writer and readers alike to settle in and more closely examine the complex aftermath of loss. The chapbook begins with an explanation, indicating Manning’s desire to make sense of something. In “Your Death Explained in Birds,” Manning looks towards nature for answers, though at this point the reader doesn’t know who the “you” is yet. She writes, “Death is the great egret at the swamp, picking newly hatched green herons from their cypress nest…Death is the egret dropping fresh young birds into the swamp with barely a ripple.” (Manning 1). Such disheartening imagery points towards not just the circle of life, but an insignificant and commonplace quality of death. Other lines aim to define the self amongst such loss. Manning states, “I am the pregnant woman standing horrified and helpless. I am the mother heron shrieking and snapping on the branch below. I am the smallest green heron in the nest” (1). The ability to place oneself in multiple positions, to know oneself literally and metaphorically, demonstrates Manning’s dexterity as a poet and provides insight towards the keen self-awareness to follow in the chapbook.

Manning paints a vivid picture of Granny for readers to care about and grieve for. One of the strongest poems from 28,065 Nights, “How to Use Vanilla,” has a didactic title. In the midst of loss, it’s natural to look for directions in order to move forward. Manning learns not only how to make syrup for waffles, but also about the type of woman Granny was. She shares:

“You told me that when you were young, poor girls used vanilla extract as perfume…You’d save it for secret dates, for sneaking off to carnivals. One drop for an older boy, two drops if Daddy disapproved of him for driving too fast.” (Manning 3)

For so many folks, it’s hard to imagine familial elders as people living their lives before their roles as grandparent, parent, etc. in relation to our existence. For example, a later poem, “I Sniff Your Socks,” includes a tender description of Granny: “They smell like you—clean soap, a light blue smell. I handle them carefully and keep them folded” (Manning 13). On the surface, such details are fitting for a grandmother or matriarch. “How to Use Vanilla,” on the other hand, is a delightful celebration to a young woman’s ingenuity, resourcefulness, and rebellious nature. Even though the poem ends on the domestic image of homemade waffles, Manning has flashed an entire life in the previous lines.

At times, Manning’s speaker admits to the struggle of actualizing her main subject in words. When one is first the listener and later becomes the storyteller, details are forgotten, reshaped, or given different significance. “Thomas Anthony,” an example of this phenomenon, is a sad poem about a stillborn child. While the poem ends with an admittance, “The last time you told me this story, I realized I’d never asked the baby’s name” (7), the title reminds readers that Manning, at some point, did learn. Manning uses a seemingly simple format to house her poems, and yet such play with suspense and timing has me rereading them over and over.

Throughout 28,065 Nights, Manning’s speaker acknowledges the passing of time with a tone that’s mature and also saddened. She asks in the middle of the chapbook: “Can the memory of you stay in these things…?” (12). Even without grief or trauma, memory is challenging to control. Poems, objects, stories, places, and familiar faces all help us retain beloved moments in our minds, but ultimately, like nature’s circle of life for the egret in the swamp, there is loss and new birth. One of the later poems in the book, structured as three prose blocks, is organized around three basic understandings that relate to the past, present, and future: “Your house is the setting of my earliest stories…Your house is also my mind’s blueprint for every other house…Your house is someone else’s house now” (16). Once again, Manning reveals information in the title, “The New Owner Invited Me In,” that readers then understand more clearly once they reach the last line.

28,065 Nights is touching and honest portrayal of losing a matriarch. Manning’s details of the past and questions for the future show all the nuances that come with grief, including laughter, joy, and healing. She ends the chapbook with the title poem, which emphasizes the necessity of stories. 28,065 Nights, therefore, also functions on the whole as a set of instructions, encouraging readers to hold onto stories as tightly as possible, that they are as vital as breathing to keep moving on, to continue living life to the fullest.

28,065 Nights is available from River Glass Books

Livia Meneghin (she/her) is the author of the chapbook Honey in My Hair and the Sundress Publications Reads Editor. She earned a Writers’ Room of Boston Poetry Fellowship, Breakwater Review‘s 2022 Peseroff Prize, and Second Place in The Room Magazine‘s 2023 Poetry Contest. Her writing has found homes in Gasher, Thrush, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from Emerson College, where she now teaches writing and literature. She is a cancer survivor.

I’m not joking when I say I’ve had several mothers and fathers, mountains of people that roll through my life like the hills I know as my home. When I say I’ve lived everywhere in Knoxville, I’m not kidding at all, and I know I can’t trade it for the world. But oh boy do I try! My place in this world is one to learn, that’s about as much as you can ask from me as an early-twenty-something. What better way to learn than to read the works of others?

As it has grown over the years, I find myself more and more attracted to my hometown’s book scene. McKay’s, estate and yard sales, as well as any secondhand book store, are the most likely places to find me. So many accessible books! From a very young age, I found myself pouring over textbooks, almanacs, encyclopedias, memoirs, and the mythology series we all read as kids. 

I have not met many people who have walked my path before me. But I have met many people whose perspectives I cannot get enough of, as well as people who I talk to once and never again that I remember. I know people have told me it is important for me to share my story, as a child of immigrants passed through foster care’s many hands.

I know it is important to share the works of others. I’ve always needed them to feel like someone walks beside me. These things, as well as the popular morning sun and waning moon in every college poem, are what have compelled me to dream of writing.

I’ve worked odd jobs since I was fourteen; coffee shops, retail, hospital work, and research, sometimes multiple at once. However, my passion really lies in digital archives and preservation. Have you ever held a work of art older than you are? It’s what I’ve chosen to work in for now. People have always praised my work ethic or the way I meld smoothly into whatever’s thrown at me, and now I think to myself, “What if there’s something more? Something left to do I haven’t yet?” 

I don’t want to write about what makes other people happy or what is the most productive. I want to write about the laughs between construction workers when the birds wake and a pole falls into the snow. I want to write about a girl in her car, working the grind in fast food, winning the lottery. I want to write the morning sun for someone who thought they’d outgrown learning. I am so, so grateful to write for Sundress Publications because of the doors I know it will open for my future and all of the reading I am sure to do more of this semester. Whenever I read, I learn to write, and whenever I learn to write, I learn how to live a life well-penned.

Brendon Blair is an Appalachia-borne writer born and bred on trailer living and warm Mexican cuisine. Having a dual major in Psychology and English from the University of Tennessee Knoxville, Brendon enjoys intertwining the experiences of queer and fostered people in poetry and prose. They also hold an administrative assistantship at the Office of Science and Technology Information in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. When not writing or working, Brendon enjoys playing strategy games, and dreams of owning a cat to call Eggs Benedict.

Sundress Publications is pleased to announce that the readers for our 2024 AWP off-site journals reading, which include beestung, Rogue Agent, Doubleback Review, and The Wardrobe, include KB Brookins, Cat Ingrid Leeches, Crystal Odelle, Jess Sifa, Caitlin Cowan, Amy Haddad, Lenna Jawdat, Atia Sattar, Madeleine Barnes, Mary Hawley, Ania Payne, Remi Recchia, Asa Drake, and Jae Nichelle. The reading will take place on February 9^th, 2024, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM at Nimble Brewing Company 1735 Oak Street Kansas City, MO 64108.

beestung readers

KB Brookins is a writer, cultural worker, and artist from Texas. They are the author of How to Identify Yourself with a Wound (Kallisto Gaia Press 2022), Freedom House (Deep Vellum 2023), and Pretty (Alfred A. Knopf 2024). How to Identify Yourself with a Wound won the Saguaro Poetry Prize, the Writer’s League of Texas Discovery Prize, and a Stonewall Honor Book Award. Freedom House has received praise from Vogue, BookRiot, Autostraddle, and others. KB is a 2023 National Endowment of the Arts Fellow with writing published in Poets.org, Teen Vogue, Oxford American, and elsewhere. Follow them online at @earthtokb.

Cat Ingrid Leeches is a writer, editor, and adjunct. Their collection, I Wander the Earth, Hungry For Semen, is forthcoming from Carrion Bloom Books.

Crystal Odelle (they/she) is a queer trans storyteller and author of the chapbook Trans Studies (Gold Line Press, 2024). Their stories have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Split Lip Magazine, beestung, manywor(l)ds, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. Crystal was a Tin House Scholar and Lambda Literary Fellow, nominated for Best of the Net, and anthologized in We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction. She writes RPGs at Feverdream Games and serves as academic and administrative coordinator for the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.

Jess Silfa is an Afro-Latine writer from the South Bronx. They graduated with an MFA in Fiction from Vanderbilt University and are currently a PhD student at the University of Cincinnati as a Yates Fellow. Jess is President of the Disabled and D/deaf Writers Caucus and has been published or has work forthcoming in ANMLY, beestung, Transition Magazine, and others.

Rogue Agent readers

Caitlin Cowan is the author of Happy Everything (Cornerstone Press, 2024). She has taught writing at UNT, Texas Woman’s University, and Interlochen Center for the Arts. Caitlin works in arts nonprofit administration for Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, where she serves as Director of International Programs and as Chair of Creative Writing. Caitlin also serves as Poetry Co-Editor at Pleiades and writes PopPoetry, a weekly poetry and pop culture newsletter. She lives on Michigan’s west coast with her husband, their young daughter, and two mischievous cats. Find her at caitlincowan.com.

Amy Haddad is a poet, nurse, and Professor Emerita at Creighton University. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals, including Journal of Medical Humanities, Touch, Bellevue Literary Review, Pulse, Persimmon Tree, Annals of Internal Medicine, Aji Magazine, DASH, Oberon Poetry Magazine, and Rogue Agent. Her first chapbook, The Geography of Kitchens, was published by Finishing Line Press in August 2021. Her first poetry collection, An Otherwise Healthy Woman, was published by Backwaters Press in 2022. The collection won first place in the Creative Works category of the American Journal of Nursing 2022 Books of the Year Awards. You can learn more about her work at: www.amyhaddadpoetry.com.

Lenna Jawdat is a D.C.-based writer and psychotherapist. Her writing, which explores trauma, identity, and resilience, has appeared in Poet Lore, Passenger’s Journal, Rogue Agent, and Koukash Review, among others. She was a 2023 Sundress Academy for the Arts summer resident and 2021 Best of the Net nominee for her poem “Ode to the Psoas.” She is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts, where she is Poetry Co-Editor for Chapter House Journal. Lenna is currently working on a book-length visual documentary poem.

Atia Sattar is a Pakistani-born teacher, scholar, and meditator living in Los Angeles. Her writing explores the embodied intersections of gender, race, mindfulness, and motherhood. Her work has appeared in various publications, including Rogue Agent, Lion’s Roar, Tricycle, and The Cambridge Quarterly for Health Care Ethics. She is Associate Teaching Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Southern California.

Doubleback Review readers

Madeleine Barnes is a writer, artist, and PhD candidate at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her debut full-length poetry collection, You Do Not Have To Be Good, was published by Trio House Press in 2020. She is also the author of four chapbooks, most recently The Memory Dictionary (Ethel Press) and Women’s Work (Tolsun Books). Her dissertation-in-progress explores how women use textile work to survive and respond to violence. She earned her MFA at New York University. madeleinebarnes.com.

Mary Hawley is a fiction writer, poet, and literary translator. Her short stories have appeared in magazines such as Hypertext, The Saturday Evening Post, and Doubleback Review, and she received an Illinois Literary Award for fiction. Her translations (Spanish to English) of poetry and prose have appeared in The Common, TriQuarterly, and Deinos, and she is currently translating a trilogy of novels by the Uruguayan writer Sergio Altesor Licandro. She lives in Evanston, Illinois.

Ania Payne lives in Manhattan, Kansas, with her husband, Great Dane, husky, two tiger cats, and two backyard chickens. She teaches in the English Department at Kansas State University and has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction. She is the author of the chapbook Karma Animalia. She has previously been published in Bending Genres, The Rush, Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel, Whiskey Island, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

Remi Recchia (he/him), PhD, is a trans poet, essayist, and editor from Kalamazoo, Michigan. A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Remi’s work has appeared in World Literature Today, Best New Poets 2021, and Prairie Schooner, among others. Works include Quicksand/Stargazing (Cooper Dillon Books, 2021); Sober (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2022); Little Lenny Gets His Horns (Querencia Press, 2023); From Gold, Ghosts: Alchemy Erasures (Gasher Press, 2023); and Transmasculine Poetics: Filling the Gap in Literature & the Silences Around Us (Sundress Publications, forthcoming). Remi has been a Tin House Scholar and Thomas Lux Scholar. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Bowling Green State University.

The Wardrobe readers

Asa Drake is a Filipina American poet and author of the chapbook One Way to Listen (Gold Line Press, 2023). She has received fellowships and awards from the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest, Tin House, and Idyllwild Arts. Her poems have been published with The Slowdown Podcast, The American Poetry Review, The Paris Review Daily, and The Georgia Review.

Louisiana-born and Portland-based Jae Nichelle is the author of God Themselves and the poetry chapbook The Porch (As Sanctuary). She was the inaugural poetry winner of the John Lewis Writing Award from the Georgia Writers Association, and her poetry has appeared in Best New Poets 2020, The Washington Square Review, The Offing, Muzzle Magazine, and elsewhere. She is also a slam poetry champion, and her spoken word poems have been featured by Write About Now, Speak Up Poetry Series, and Button Poetry.