"Library," Albert Goldbarth

[switchercat.livejournal.com]

This book saved my life.
This book takes place on one of the two small tagalong moons of Mars.
This book requests its author's absolution, centuries after his death.
This book required two of the sultan's largest royal elephants to bear it;
this other book fit in a gourd.
This book reveals The Secret Name of God, and so its author is on a death
list.
This is the book I lifted high over my head, intending to smash a roach in
my girlfriend's bedroom; instead, my back unsprung, and I toppled
painfully into her bed, where I stayed motionless for eight days.
This is a "book." That is, an audio cassette. This other "book" is a screen
and a microchip. This other "book," the sky.
In chapter three of this book, a woman tries explaining her husband's
tragically humiliating death to their daughter: reading it is like walking
through a wall of setting cement.
This book taught me everything about sex.
This book is plagiarized.
This book is transparent; this book is a codex in Aztec; this book, written
by a prisoner, in dung; the wind is turning the leaves of this book: a
hill-top olive as thick as a Russian novel.
This book is a vivisected frog, and ova its text.
This book was dictated by Al-Méllikah, the Planetary Spirit of the Seventh
Realm, to his intermediary on Earth (the Nineteenth Realm), who
published it, first in mimeograph, and many editions later in gold-
stamped leather.
This book taught me everything wrong about sex.

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My Belovéd Compares Herself to a Pint of Stout by Paul Durcan

[brttvns.livejournal.com]

When in the heat of the first night of summer

I observe with a whistle of envy

That Jackson has driven out the road for a pint of stout,

She puts her arm around my waist and scolds me:

Am I not your pint of stout? Drink me.

There is nothing except, of course, self-pity

To stop you also having your pint of stout.


Putting self-pity on a leash in the back of the car,

I drive out the road, do a U-turn,

Drive in the hall door, up the spiral staircase,

Into her bedroom. I park at the foot of her bed,

Nonchalantly step out leaving the car unlocked,

Stroll over to the chest of drawers, lean on it,

Circumspectly inspect the backs of my hands,

Modestly request from her a pint of stout.

She turns her back, undresses, pours herself into bed,

Adjusts the pillows, slaps her hand on the coverlet:

Here I am - at the very least

Look at my new cotton nightdress before you shred it

And do not complain that I have not got a head on me.


I look around to see her foaming out of the bedclothes

Not laughing but gazing at me out of four-legged eyes.

She says: Close your eyes, put your hands around me.

I am the blackest, coldest pint you will ever drink,

So sip me slowly, let me linger on your lips,

Ooze through your teeth, dawdle down your throat,

Before swooping down into your guts.


While you drink me I will deposit my scum

On your rim and when you get to the bottom of me,

No matter how hard you try to drink my dregs -

And being a man, you will, no harm in that -

I will keep bubbling up back at you.

For there is no escaping my aftermath.

Tonight - being the first night of summer -

You may drink as many pints of me as you like.

There are barrels of me in the taproom.


In thin daylight at nightfall,

You will fall asleep drunk on love.

When you wake early in the early morning

You will have a hangover,

All chaste, astringent, aflame with affirmation,

Straining at the bit to get to first mass

And holy communion and work - the good life.