There is a book of poems
that sits
beside
my favorite chair.
The person who sold
me the sitting thing
was quick to tell me
it had only
one owner
prior.
but he had died.
The one owner
had purchased it for his wife.
who didn’t like it.
and wrapped it in plastic.
along with other furniture
her husband had purchased
that was
not her style.
A mint condition
Combi Star
for Arnt Countries
for Stoke Mobler
sometime in the 1960’s-
It’s a blue striped thing,
with bright vertical
teals, aquamarines,
sequencing at different widths
maybe seven shades of bluish
greenish colors
reminding me of shifting water
reflecting
behind the glass
in dark
indoor aquariums
juxtaposed
against deep mahogany stained
ski slope
teak resting arms.
and the black coated
steel reclining
mechanism
underneath
is
like butter.
And the ottoman.
And the ottoman.
And the ottoman.
I keep a book of poems
out in the open
next to the chair
some side table
that had many owners and
what I can only imagine is
an uninteresting history.
compared to this creature
or the set of three
burnt orange
velvets
in the style Gio Ponti
that
according to an elderly nun
with wrinkles you would
expect on a long haul truck driver
at a church rummage
felt compelled to whisper
that the triplet set of chairs
came from Eagle River
from the …Jack
…O’Lantern
… Lodge
and God knows
Jimmy Hoffa
sat in them.
And that I might
not want
that type of history
in my house
with children.
The book of poems sits
out in the open
among these things.
Indecency
by J. B. Reed.
which I haven’t read.
sold by a small publishing press
that sells itself
as a provider of
experimental death texts.
and my mother-in-law asks
why do you keep this out here
like this?
I don’t know.
The whole thing
seems
indecent.
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