Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Soil liquified under the deluge of three days
Grand old trees litter the landscape, top-heavy
Pulled down by the weight laid upon them
Ground to dust and leaving gaping holes
I really hope, against all hope
That they are not metaphors

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Amid the rains that have been unusually heavy this year
Blossoming forth from an invisible network beneath the yard
Decay personified, but dedicated to spreading new life
Its long red tubules rise, alien, seemingly spontaneous
I ought to be in awe of it, evolved to spread spores on the wings of flies
But looking at its limp red tubular shape
Reading the name on my naturalist app
I can’t help but giggle like a locker room teen
Is it just me
Or does its name
“The devil’s dipstick”
Sound like something
A prudish old woman
Would say, horrified
At the thought of a man

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

The day dawned cloudy, stormy
Vivid patches of blue between angry, weeping clouds
Three hours later and it would have been invisible
But when the eclipse came, shedding the dappled light
Of an imperfectly covered celestial orb
(Because who has the time, money for eclipse tourism)
There was just enough cerulean, just enough light
That the neighborhood, looking skyward with glasses opaque
Could glimpse, fleetingly, through the clouds
A sliver of sunshine

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

I went to the estate sale on a whim
Thinking I knew what I’d find
The detritus of old age, laid out
Pricetagged for your convenience
Wary strangers hauling away parts of a life
Shelves clogged with diet books
Gospel and Christmas music both vinyl and cassette
Bibles and commentaries, uncracked
I found all that but also
Stacks of violin bows, strings unstrung
Batons fit to conduct orchestras
The musicians waiting, sealed, in CDs
All the equipment for adding intertitles
To the 16mm home movies that lay about
Reel-to-reel tapes from a college radio station
Still in their original brown paper
I wonder if, when my time has come
And the estate salesmen crawl through the ashes
Price tagging a life after its close
If anyone will notice, lying there
The hundred tiny stories, now forever lost
For want of someone to tell them

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Roused today, early, on a weekend off
Wondering idly how long it’s been
Since I felt truly rested
Even after a long night’s sleep
Is it the weight of the years
Anxiety for the future
Or just rosy glasses looking back
On a youth just as sleepless
Just as anxious
Just as awake

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Whispered in the labyrinth of cubes
Watercooler talk without the cooler
“That one’s put in her two weeks, you know.”
It’s said with distaste, with venom adrip
“They are a traitor for leaving” is clear
Or is it just because you are jealous
They’re fleeing the corner you’ve painted
Your life into, and you would do anything
To join them if you only knew how

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

No one should throw books away, you say
They are an object, sacred, a shrine
Knowledge in its purest form
Even as covers splinter and spines break
Pages flake and tear, discoloration creeps
So will you take them, I say, these books
Will you give them a home and a shelf
Falling apart though they are
But no, there is no room, not for you
But somebody must want them
Somebody will take them
Surely

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Every day we all look out
Feeders full, binocs ready
They are coming northward
Along the ancestral roads
As yet unbroken, if frayed
Anthropocene not yet their doom
A warming world not yet finished
First of season a flittering delight
Last of season too sad to contemplate
I try to look up at the sky
To take in the song
As if I will never hear it again

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

You cannot start
Anything serious
On April first
It will always
Be taken for
A joke, even
If it is in
Deadly earnest
Which is fine
If you have a
Choice, but
What a truly
Terrible day
To have an
Unexpected
Thing happen

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

One day Rabbit and Piglet were sitting outside Pooh’s front door listening to Rabbit, and Pooh was sitting with them. It was a drowsy summer afternoon, and the Forest was full of gentle sounds, which all seemed to be saying to Pooh, “Don’t listen to Rabbit, listen to me.” So he got into a comfortable position for not listening to Rabbit, and from time to time he opened his eyes to say “Ah!” and then closed them again to say “True,” and from time to time Rabbit said, “You see what I mean, Piglet,” very earnestly, and Piglet nodded earnestly to show that he did.

“In fact,” said Rabbit, coming to the end of it at last, “Tigger’s getting so Bouncy nowadays that it’s time we taught him a lesson. Don’t you think so, Piglet?”

Piglet said that Tigger was very Bouncy, and that if they could think of a way of unbouncing him, it would be a Very Good Idea.

“Just what I feel,” said Rabbit. “What do you say, Pooh?”

Pooh opened his eyes with a jerk and said, “Extremely.”

“Extremely what?” asked Rabbit.

“What you were saying,” said Pooh. “Undoubtably.”

Piglet gave Pooh a stiffening sort of nudge, and Pooh, who felt more and more that he was somewhere else, got up slowly and began to look for himself.

“But how shall we do it?” asked Piglet. “What sort of a lesson, Rabbit?”

“That’s the point,” said Rabbit.

The word “lesson” came back to Pooh as one he had heard before somewhere.

“There’s a thing called Twy-stymes,” he said. “Christopher Robin tried to teach it to me once, but it didn’t.”

“What didn’t?” said Rabbit.

“Didn’t what?” said Piglet.

Pooh shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It just didn’t. What are we talking about?”

“Pooh,” said Piglet reproachfully, “haven’t you been listening to what Rabbit was saying?”

“I listened, but I had a small piece of fluff in my ear. Could you say it again, please, Rabbit?”

Rabbit never minded saying things again, so he asked where he should begin from; and when Pooh had said from the moment when the fluff got in his ear, and Rabbit had asked when that was, and Pooh had said he didn’t know because he hadn’t heard properly, Piglet settled it all by saying that what they were trying to do was, they were just trying to think of a way to get the bounces out of Tigger, because however much you liked him, you couldn’t deny it, he did bounce.

“Oh, I see,” said Pooh.

“There’s too much of him,” said Rabbit, “that’s what it comes to.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!