Review: Charlie C. Petch • by J.B. Stone • 2

Book Review: Charlie C. Petch's Why I Was Late by J.B. Stone             In Part III, the consequences of a relenting patriarchy show their stripes on more personal levels in “The Saddest Country Song You Ever Wrote.” Petch opens up the wounds of their own past, in this powerful, yet heartbreaking depiction of mourning, even mourning for those who’ve hurt them.      “On the way to your memorial      I threw away the pieces of wall      you hit instead of me      The crowbar I kept under the bed      was in the trunk      and I was breathing louder      than you would have liked      We were a love poem once” (74)         Even in death, the trauma of abuse makes its presence felt, the lingering phantom of someone else’s heinous actions. There are more examples through Petch’s work showing the many ways the ghosts of a patriarchal past still haunt in the present. A poem in particular from part IV, “Forward & Reverse,” seemingly written after the misogynistic terrorist attack via a sadistic man-child in a rented van. A tragic incident that happened in Toronto, only a few years ago, and considered one of the deadliest vehicle-ramming attacks in the Canadian History:                “I was afraid to walk faster                than the man ahead of me                of the men who spilled from                bars to pat my dog                afraid for her when she                didn’t want their hands                clawing” (83)         Petch’s accounts reflect the ramparts of a national tragedy, all caused by a man who saw love more as a forced thrusting, than a moment of growth. In Petch’s second stanza, there are small glimpses of these red flags, but vital glimpses, nonetheless. For, they show how expanded the level of violence that still flows like blood in the select groups of unchanged men. The incelious aggression of certain men who are unloved for all the right reasons.         Why I Was Late is a literary clinic in carefully balancing the accounts of survival without exploiting one’s story, let alone the story of others. In the aftermath of tragedy, Petch’s use of dark wit, and poetic admission, delivers a brave reveal that many in confrontation would rather leave a curtain closed to.   –•–    [  >>>>>   BIOS   I   COVER  ]     + [Distillate © HA&L + J.B. Stone {from the Greek bios} -- the course of a life.]