Book Loaned to Tom Andrews by Bobby C. Rogers
I’d already found out that one of the secrets to happiness was
never loan your books. But I loaned it anyway. We were all of
us poor and living
on ideas, stumbling home late to basement apartments, talking
to ourselves. What did we own except books and debt? When
the time came
we could move it all in the trunk of a car. Tom knew what a book
was worth—he brought it back a week later, seemingly
unhandled, just a little looser
in the spine, a trade paper edition of The Death of Artemio
Cruz, required reading for a course in postmodernism we
were suffering through.
The book’s trashed now, boxed up and buried in the garage with
a hundred other things I can’t throw away. When I moved
back south I loaned it again
to a girl I’d just met. At some party I’d said it was the best
novel since Absalom, Absalom!, which may have been true,
but mostly I was trying to impress her,
and convince myself, still testing all I’d been told about how
the matter of a book is best kept separate from, well,
matter. Months later it turned up
on my front steps without comment, the cover torn in two
places, the dog-eared pages of self-conscious prose
stuck together with dark, rich chocolate. Art by David Doran
Recommended listening: Informer - Snow Terraform - Mutual Benefit
Links of the Day: Black Art Matters Opening the Heart Through Ecstatic Poetry: Coleman Barks at TEDxUGA The Photographic Inspirations Behind Moonlight A love letter to Kochi (my piece for Sbcltr)