Genealogies of Rust, by Matt Beach

Prose, chapbook, 40 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Genealogies of Rust is a nonlinear collection of stories tracing three generations of a Rust Belt family and the corrosive moments that shape them. Set in cheap motels, wood-paneled living rooms, and fluorescent laundromats, each story is a fractured glimpse of generational contusion, internalized futility, and practiced secrets. Still, in small mercies—an extended hand, a saved photograph, a tall glass of chocolate milk—they insist that even corroded histories hold a glint of grace.

Like rust slowly blooming across a doorframe, shame and violence oxidize inside a body, passed down like a surname. Yet, as rust etches iron into unexpected compositions, suffering leaves patterns that can catch the light. Genealogies of Rust lingers inside that alchemy, asking what beyond genetics we inherit, how much suffering our hands can hold, and what light our darkened legacies might still admit.

Matt Beach is a writer, artist, and graphic designer from the Rust Belt city of Canton, Ohio. His poems and stories appear in Literary Orphans, Epigraph, Heavy Feather Review, Weave, Potluck, and elsewhere. You can find him at http://mattbeach.wixsite.com/work