New Print Publication: Copper Nickel

S-Town the podcast captivated me. I finished it in the first 36 hours. In transit between work stuff, kids’ stuff, and home stuff, I couldn’t put down my headphones. S-Town is lovely and loving storytelling. Horology plays a central role in the story, and I’m reminded that my short essay about my mother’s preoccupation with clocks appears in the beautiful Copper Nickel this spring. Nonfiction Editor Joanna Luloff commented on how much story was “packed into 3 pages,” which made me feel good and grateful my piece found this home. My mother’s relationship with time was as complex as the lunar-phase longcase I inherited when she died. On the one hand, my mother, sisters, and I packed so much into our bedrooms, basement, into our hours after my father died. On the other hand, our dozens of clocks ticked painfully on time, rooting us quietly in place, when a quickening would have been welcome. Time seemed, with sadness, to circle back. Copper Nickel was founded in part by Jake Adam York, whose life as a poet and person will be celebrated for a long time, and who died too early. York was 40 when he died suddenly, having lived just 31 days longer than my father had lived before he too died suddenly. After receiving my copy of Copper Nickel, I got to reading up on the poet who started this gorgeous journal, and learned he spent most of his childhood in Alabama, a couple counties from Bibb, the home of the horologist at the center of S-Town.