David Lee Garrison
Card Catalogue
I left a woman, a woman left me.
Lost my job, lost weight,
lost sleep. Had visions
of an alligator drowning a dog.
The old library, its titles indexed
in file cabinets, offered some refuge.
I was thumbing through listings
when I heard a strange clicking sound,
turned, and saw a man who had
no arms. Clenched in his teeth
was a stick with a metal claw
that he pushed and pulled to flip the cards.
The poetry of
David Lee Garrison has been published widely, featured by Ted Kooser on his
American Life in Poetry, and read on
The Writer’s Almanac and the BBC. His latest book is
Light in the River (Dos Madres). His reviews have appeared in
New Letters, North Dakota Quarterly, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and others.