"How anyone could derive love and intelligence from a place like Scuffletown is a miracle. That one could take these gifts and turn them into such arresting poetry is an achievement. Chris Mattingly's poems spread like wildflowers in a dead backyard, and pretty soon the flowers reclaim and restore the whole damned place. We should all be glad this haunted, beautiful book is in the world."--Maurice ManningScuffletown is a city of bricks, a grown-over ghost town on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, named for men fighting outside its bars. The characters of Chris Mattingly's imagination have repopulated and re-settled it. For them, Scuffletown is where "ain't is a hillbilly ohm," where the jump rope rhymes still sing about race relations, where Budweiser, Kessler's, and pills operate as currency and accelerant. Outlaws "hush-talk phone-cops," families tailgate while watching Fish and Game shock the lake. Scuffletown's son asks "What you would say to that man who pretends / Your father isn't the giant he is?" and tells his mama with "her eyes like broken jelly jars" not to weep. With money crumpled in his fists, he's homeward-bound to buy one brick, "not bread, not spinach, / not chicken-a brick." And, with the muscle only an inspired voice of the new South can flex, look at what he uses that brick to build.

Scuffletown

Chris Mattingly

Typecast Publishing

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Chris Mattingly. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Chris Mattingly

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Chris Mattingly. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Scuffletown