Singed and Soaked

Fire

Did you know classics and first editions
are most flammable? Fire has an appetite
for handmade objects coated with sweat and worry.
Hard work and sad obligation convert
books into faded ink and flaked pages. Fire,
the ruthless critic, chews whole sections black,
burns away the unpopular ending, clichés,
extra words. The books, so dry and bored,
are eager to burn, so notorious in their combustion.
My grandparents called bookshelves fire ledges.

Water

Firefighters transformed the bookstore
into a flower shop: the books bloom huge.
Each page: a hair that used to line up so flatly,
now waves—influenced by the water gulped.
Even the covers bow. No longer close, the only
way they’ll meet again is to flip backwards. The pages
finally remember what came before their parched
lives. The water confirms what the plant books
have always told them: we were once alive.






Click here to listen to Valerie Loveland reading "Singed and Soaked"






Valerie Loveland is the author of Reanimated, Somehow (Scrambler Books 2009). Her poetry has been featured in Dzanc Book's Best of the Web 2008 and at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. She enjoys running and audio poetry, and works as an optician's apprentice in Acton, Massachusetts.