Brooke McKinney is a poet and writer from South Georgia. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in English from Valdosta State University and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. Brooke's work was a finalist in the Key West Emerging Writer’s Contest and the World’s Best Short-Short Story. Her memoir in progress, Creatures Like Us, has received scholarships to the Sewanee Writers' Conference, Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference, and Writers in Paradise. She is also the recipient of two Academy of American Poets Awards. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Florida Review, New South, Salt Hill Journal, Potomac Review, The Southeast Review, Columbia Poetry Review, RHINO Poetry, Montreal International Poetry Prize Anthology, Artemis and Kestrel. She lives with two dogs, Jane and Arlo, in Beaufort, South Carolina, where they have found the most magical place to call home.
My poetry collection, The Distance Between Birds is currently in presale until August 11, 2023 from Finishing Line Press.
Find out more and order your copy here: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/the-distance-between-birds-by-brooke-mckinney/
Blurbs will include:
“These poems are intelligent, heartbroken, tender, beautiful, and altogether true reconciliations between the self and the world. Their music is a way of thinking, remembering, hoping, dreaming, and praying. Their highest effect is to leave you eager to forgive trespasses, real or imaginary, and to love the world.”
- Li-Young Lee
“Many war poems are not about those who went to war. The Distance Between Birds is the story of a daughter at war trying to recover what’s been lost. “The love that war stole” makes her repeat “death, /over and over, until I understood this sad story.” It’s easy to forget the lessons about separating speaker and poet; it’s easy to believe what we desire: that these poems, if not most poems, are auto biographical. You want the poet you have bonded with to find happiness or at least come to terms with the great losses that seem to spawn her verses. Sometimes in poetry, as in life, you don’t get what you desire. Sometimes, a terrible beauty is all that’s given, and it has to be enough.”
- Rick Campbell
“There is an abiding sense of loss in these poems, particularly for a father tragically damaged by war, but through the power of memory and vivid language The Distance between Birds honors what is lost and will not let what is lost be forgotten. Brooke McKinney is a very fine poet and she deserves a wide and appreciative audience.”
- Ron Rash
My real father Joe wiped blood off the sharp end of his hatchet. I was eight years old, standing on a five-gallon bucket in the horse pasture, leaning over the wooden table Joe prepared for the puppies.
“Come on, now,” he said.
“I can’t, Daddy.”
“You gotta be tougher than that,” he said.
I grabbed another puppy to hold still. The puppies moved around by using the momentum of their heads, swinging them around and side to side. Joe was tall and stood over me like a molded, stone statue, as if he were someone important who died. His hands were large as cow’s hooves, and his fingers so big he couldn’t wear a wedding ring. There was no way I’d tell him no.
Joe used the hatchet, rearing back, and with one clear motion, hacked off the puppy’s tail. Its cry was awful and contagious, making the rest of the litter scattered across the splintery plywood flinch and cry, too, as if they were all connected somehow. Even the cows and horses looked up from their grazing, glaring at us, twitching their ears and slapping flies down with their tails. Each time the ax fell, a whimper fled from the blood-stained table, echoing across the field towards the horizon.
I had already picked one out—a solid white one with a brown dot on her head. I’d name her Gurley. Her eyes were barely open as she tried squirming away. I wrapped my hands around her tiny body, turning her backend toward Joe, letting her face me. “It’s okay girl, it’ll grow back.” Which wasn’t true, but I thought it was a hopeful thing to say. I let her inch near me to the edge of the table, but Joe yelled, “Hold ‘em still!” And I did. Eyes shut, I prayed he didn’t miss and chop off more than the tail. By the time we finished, tiny brown and white furry tails covered the table. The puppies were spotted with bloody prints on their backs where I held them down. The whimpers faded, collecting somewhere beyond the field.
That’s how poor people took off their dogs’ tails. Most would take a litter to the vet for a procedure like that, but we didn’t. And Joe wanted to keep the bulldog breed’s infamous look—no tail. Joe said a dog won’t remember such pain or that a dog won’t remember what happened to its tail or remember that it ever had one. I remembered.
That night, when everyone had gone to sleep, after Joe tucked me in and sang “You Are My Sunshine,” I climbed out of my bedroom window with a blanket and pink Barbie van. I quietly made my way to the barn where we put the puppies. I crawled in, sat the van down, and spread out the blanket. The blanket brought warmth, some comfort after all that confusion. What I thought the van would be good for, I don’t know. Maybe my imagination reached toward an impossible way out for those dogs. The pups heard me, and I heard them, their grunts and whines moving around in the darkness. I found Gurley and wrapped her in my arms, her small black eyes reflecting the moon shining through a cracked wooden plank in the roof. Days went by, and her tail healed, crusted over with a black scab.
https://floridareview.cah.ucf.edu/issue/44-2-fall-2020/
Last Bit of Sweetness
Brooke McKinney
My workshops are interactive and intimate, creating a space for new and experienced writers to share their stories. While the classes may discuss contemporary writers and topics on the craft itself, my emphasis is on writing. I want people to leave feeling like they've started a journey with their own voice.
If you’re interested in how to get your writing project started or already have something in the works, I also provide writing mentorship and editorial services. Please contact me for more information.
-- AMBER WHEELER BACON
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