An Excerpt from In The Heart of the Thumb

Matt Chappel

Winner of the Tyner Prize for Poetry

Nominated by C. Vince Samarco, Professor of English

Originally from Marlette, Michigan, and now living in Freeland, Michigan, Matt Chappel graduated from SVSU in May 2021 with a double major in English literature and creative writing, and with a minor in sociology. He was a member of the 20th class of Roberts Fellows and previously won the Tyner Prize for Fiction.

Much of Matt’s work focuses on rural people and rural environments. His aim in writing is to create enjoyable but understandable pieces that are rich in imagery and use everyday language. In the near future, Matt plans to return to SVSU to pursue a master’s in social work.

Matt originally produced the following pieces in Creative Writing: Poetry (ENGL 305) in Winter 2021. The class was taught by Dr. Arra Ross, professor of English, and the goal of this independent project was to create themes and threads into an overarching narrative.

The Wildling

Outlawed to the orchard in the throes of spring just as the blossom has burst the bud, now down a row where a wheelbarrow sliced the mud, I spend my mornings ducking under the string, pruning the rogue branches and loading the cart with flowers and twigs so blooming in my heart it hurts to cut them down. I know it’s good, in the time of getting ready for future fruit, to shear the surplus off and leave the base (wrinkled and dark against the tender wood) and give the orchard a consecrated space to come into its own and fully mature. But something in me doesn’t seem so sure. I know what the early years are essential for for the deep affirming of the grafted root, the plenty pruning it needs so it can grow, and the strength of a trellis to firmly brace the weight of heavy branches. I know, I know, but to cut them down! I stand here on the brink of fruit or fire I can see the branches piled (pink flowers among the lichen and the mold) waiting to be burned. And just to think I am the one who’ll burn them. But I was told not to have a conscience about these things. And I know what’s expected of me in the name of cultivation to tame these strayed and wild. but I wish my purpose was, rather, to wild the tame.

Haying

We were getting out of the field today the flatbed wagon stacked with hay, without sides or straps we would ease on home. But as we hit the rise in the road with the tractor straining to take us on we lurched in a pothole and the load swayed side to side like a metronome, to one extreme, then back the other way and fell the country road filled up with hay. With almost half the wagon gone, a whole day’s work had been undone from something’s heart being pulled or swayed.

At odds with ends, beneath the trees in the crisscrossed leaves of sun and shade, we stood among the bales in broken heaps, unfolded like accordions fractured frayed. What could we do all that was done was done. We stooped down to restack the hay, picked up the broken pieces and moved on.

Backfilling

I was easing myself down out of the bed of the truck, having just filled a hole with sand and soil when I saw, laying at the edge of the road a tin can crushed, the back end flattened in such a way that the lid had popped out and folded in two to make a shimmering tailfin, like a silver scaled flying fish who during the night chanced to fly up onto the deck of this leeward leaning boat and got caught against the gunwale of the gutter pan. And I surprised myself in thinking this way, as if I were a child again, with ease making imagination, telling my stories with the characters I find at hand.

It sometimes happens this way, castaway and crushed, dreaming the secret dream of flying once again before coming back to the earth of grief and the choice to find scraps of joy in the day-to-day slog of shoveling dirt.

I fall asleep the way a drunk might fall asleep: Belly down with neck and head twisted to look out sideways, my eyes fluttering closed then lifting dreamily open as I try to will myself awake for one more drink of poem. The book that I’ve been nursing is tipping forward out of my hand and the pages slosh as it goes spilling over, washing into the carpet with the odor and guff of colloquialism, metaphor things I promised, I foggily remember, I would come back to in the morning.

Remedy

The Healing

The river is all but crosshatched to a blur, creased by the current and a restless wind that drives things downward. But I sense the stir of what will rise again still down within.

Casting far out and letting my line go slack the waters reflect, too close, a ragged sky I feel no bite, and let it drift on back. I cast up and back and forth to dry the fly, then cast and let it fall, again and again, wading to deeper pools where I hope to land one Brook there is some tension now and then and I reach in the water to wet my hand.

But I’ve pulled nothing out of these waters yet. And maybe it’s me, elusive to the game, letting them go before the hook is set. I spend my hours casting all the same.