D. A. Prince already has two full collections from HappenStance, but here′s a delightful pamphlet to add to the treasures.
Some bookmarks are embossed leather, personalised, with a name blocked in gold script—but not these. D.A. Prince’s poems consider everyday ephemera—rail tickets, a supermarket till receipt, an old postcard, a scribbled note found in a second-hand purchase.
You may have a pile of your own half-read books, threatening to topple and expose their markers. What secrets will they spill?
NOTE
It slips from a paperback (second-hand, surely,
even then) whose spine crinkles like bark,
whose familiar pages fur along the edge.
Back by 8. Don’t wait.
I’ve got the milk. Love.
No name, no date. No need
as the known hand looped and rose in haste,
slanting into the future and the torn half-sheet
blotched, somehow. Damp has found these books.
A bookmark, maybe, caught up when time ran out
but with this promise: something to return to.
And what’s there to keep except (perhaps) Love?
Why not a text? asks the child,
all thumbs, not looking up from his screen.
There is so much to explain.
