Skinny Used Book

Rock and Twig Poems


What we once called a
Used Book Store
has become a BookStore
simply by not belonging to a chain

I search old storehouses for treasure

Following the scent of old paper
I found a skinny ass book
of poetry hidden amongst
thicker and much thicker books

poetry is a journey and a mirror

I slid the thin book from
the shelf, simply from curiosity
discovering a familiar
name on the jacket

red ink on paper caught my eye

Here was a the name of a friend
who had a life
beyond the one I knew
I had no idea she wrote poetry

my lack of attention is surprising

I paid for the name on the cover
without looking inside
then carried home
the book in a non logo bag

buying a book is not the same as reading it

The book sat unopened near the television
until a commercial break
about some pharmaceutical product
I had no need for redirected my vision

I reached for the book

The words printed inside the enemic book
put ideas into my head
The images they created were nice
but did not flow easily

rocks placed in rows haphazardly

Reading her words was like watching
scenery from a moving car
I was driving and the road was rough
with potholes and boulders

This took my eyes off the scenery

Her words were not scenic roads
paved with concrete or asphalt
To my eyes they
confronted me with the journey

not the beauty of the landscape

Reaching the end of each poem
became a relief
The experience was not so much
surviving as enduring

obstacles not visions

The words were so many unstacked bricks
and rocks, plowed together, but not smoothed
her words were uneven ground
my eyes ached

words don’t always flow and still they function

Then, I wonder, what must my words
do to your traveling eyes?
You must be exhausted to have reached the end
of my short cluttered roadway

Are my words twigs and sticks on the pathway?




Sandy Kinnee
January 23, 2011

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