APRIL IS National Poetry Month. So to have your new book of poems be named one of the Books of the Week by Publishers Weekly this week has got to feel doubly good. Thus, a big congrats to our friend Mark Bibbins, whose new book is called “They Don’t Kill You Because They’re Hungry, They Kill You Because They’re Full.” A few weeks ago we featured his “Poem that Wants to Use Revelation 3:16 as an Epigraph.” Below is another great one from his new book. Enjoy!
By the Number 3
Can we back up and read
that sign again, the one
trying to tell us about a band
playing on a beach lined
with pine trees, very old.
If the internet doesn’t work
there you have to build
your own. Let’s rewrite
the constellations
so they read as all kinds
of fruits: here we see
the Grape Cluster reclining
just above the indigo treetops;
Can of Lychees keeps tampering
with my weekly horoscope
but I don’t know how.
Thus magic shuffles reluctantly
toward us and if you claim
you can organize it you should
be making a joke. Look
at a 3 the wrong way
and all you see is your own
wretchedness. If you look at 3
in a different way you might
see a fortunate mouth getting
ready to kiss. You used to
feel like you were always
going to the same place
but it didn’t hurt and other
times the ocean glowed
so blue it broke
half your bones.
Mark Bibbins’ “They Don’t Kill You Because They’re Hungry, They Kill You Because They’re Full” is available on Amazon.com.
