Richard Weaver

What happens in the mind

stays in the mind, or so we tell ourselves.
And yet many years ago you imagined
a book made up entirely of footnotes.
Years later the book IBID appeared.

You saw cereal boxes with Help-wanted ads
on them, or pictures of lost or missing children,
blurred images of grandfathers with dementia,
wandering the streets of Cleveland. Even discount

coupons for cremation. Addresses with P.O. boxes
which offered ways of offing yourself. Lists
of libraries that promised to accept long-overdue
books, even those from other libraries. You saw

films fast-forwarding, images without shape,
some with colors unknown and unnamed by Pantone.
And what you could only assume were people
seated on couches that were obviously absorbing them,

a symbiotic world where a couch potato
need not be microwaved before eaten.

 

Richard Weaver lives in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. He volunteers at the Maryland Book Bank, and acts as the Archivist-at-large for a Jesuit College founded in 1830. He is also an unofficial snowflake counter. (There are real ones).

His recent poems have appeared in the Red Eft Review, Gnarled Oak, and Conjunctions. Forthcoming poems will be appearing in Crack the Spine, Steel Toe, Clade Song, Aberration Labyrinth, Triggerfish, Kestrel, & Gingerbread House.