Read More: A brief Q&A with Eric Machan Howd
The Book Burners
On winter nights
around iron trash cans
rusted down hidden alleys
they huddle, mumbling
the sounds they fear
to define, the language
that led them to bottle
in the streets and sleep
in crumpled newspaper.
They creep along curbs
when the sun warms the sidewalks
searching for words to steal:
the nouns left behind by movers
in boxes marked “Free,”
the fables our children read
in parks on sunny afternoons;
even the poems lovers whisper
to one another on the beach
are not safe from their bony
fingers and long yellowed nails
reaching, shaking, tugging.
And when they’ve gathered
enough to fill a library,
they stagger back between buildings,
wait for darkness
and then light them,
page after page rising
to the stars in smoke
while hands are rubbed
and bourbon is passed
from a paper bag.
They hold themselves in the cold,
mumbling to the fire of words,
their eyes stuck wide
in the flash of burning ink.
The Dream of Odysseus
I listen to the wind from year to year.
Familiar faces haunt me through these days
of singing through the storms. I silence fear
as boats drift toward the invisible pier
and masts keep time above my weary haze.
I listen to the wind from year to year […]
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Eric Machan Howd is a poet, musician, and educator. His work has been published in such journals as River City, Nimrod, Stone Canoe, Caesura, and Slab. He earned his MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts as well as degrees from Binghamton University and Ithaca College. In 2023, his sixth collection of poetry, “The Last Cardinal,” was published by sometimes y publications. He is currently finishing up work on a book-length erasure project using a work by author H.P. Lovecraft.
“The Book Burners” and “The Dream of Odysseus” originally appeared in The Language and Literacy Spectrum Journal and Quiet Diamonds Anthology, respectively.
Read More: A brief Q&A with Eric Machan Howd