Book of the Week #51

Journal of a Flatlander: Poems by Don Kimball (Georgetown, KY: Finishing Line Press, 2009)

Don Kimball was one of the poets featured in our National Poetry Month Celebration a few years ago and is the leader of the monthly open mic poetry night at Gibsons.
This chapbook was in my original cataloging pile this week and is a lovely collection of Don Kimball's work. I especially liked the poem "Overbooked" -- I have the same trouble.

Overbooked
Often I find that where I take a book
out of my bookcase -- Plato, Proust, Plotinus
some epic I ought to read -- another tome
leans in to take its place. My bookish pride
gets pushed aside by other books I've bought;
still sprouting Post-its, like disheveled hair,
books do what books are bound to do, they claim
their dusty lairs. And while my appetite
for buying more provokes my wife, books plot
on either side, prepare to slap a lien
on the vacant spot, until I shove
into place a new-bought book; those daunting stacks
I sought to read -- now, age-old hardbound bores --
still hang around, displaced, on couch or floor,
demand I read or tote them out the door.

Poem reprinted here with the permission of the poet.