D.A. Cooper

To Read

There are so many books to read; they fill

the shelves of libraries and stores across

the world, as well as every empty space

inside my house. The stacks grow year by year;

they rise like zombie corpses on my desk,

my couch, and all across the floor. Each begs

to sink its dusty claws into my brain.

I crack their spines, flip through their crumbling pages,

and try to pick which ones I’ll give new life.

There are too many books to read. I see

those volumes and I know I’ll never have

the time I need to finish even just

the ones I own. They cry out from my shelves—

collected poems and stories of the dead—

entreating me to resurrect their souls.

And that is just the famous literature.

Great forests have been razed so I could buy

large piles of science fiction, fantasy,

detective novels, politics, and physics.

Selections of the best known -ologies,

a sampling of the most loved -ographies,

and sprinkles of my favorite -osophies,

all sit in sullen silence and await

the hoped for yet unlikely future date

when I will find the time I need to read.

D.A. Cooper is a poet from Texas. In addition to New Verse Review, his poetry, translations, and other writing have recently appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Light, Lighten Up Online, The Road Not Taken, and Wayfare, among others. He enjoys translating dialect poetry from Italy, watching The Office, and looking at trees.