I Keep My Names (and countdown to "Chambers Street")

#I Keep My Names (7 days remaining!)

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I keep my names in a little locked box
With drawers and tags and manilla file cards.
Little metal keys fit little grey locks
And little trim slots fit little bent hearts.

 

I keep my keys in a big sturdy desk
With four sturdy Hepplewhite iron-tip feet
And a big sturdy top, on which I rest
The big sturdy brick made of his deceit.

 

I keep my desk in an old dusty room
With dust on the sills under dusty panes
And dust swirls around in the dusty gloom
But the dust never settles in the rain,
In the rain, and the dust never settles
On the brick, on the table, with the key,
In the drawer, for the locks, on the boxes
With the bent little trim hearts arranged.

 

The dust never settles on my names.

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#Author’s Note:

In celebration of my upcoming debut poetry collection, “Chambers Street (and other small-heart poems)”, I will be posting excerpts from the poetry collection, one each day, to this subreddit, up until the release date, which is 9/20/18. That's 10 poems, one every single day for free, culminating in the long-anticipated release of “Chambers Street”.

The full list of poems that will be included is:

• Chambers Street
• The Calm Before
• Cobbe, Signet, Signet, Penn
• frak|tur
• A Word Like Wire
• Zip
• Nearly Zero
• I Keep My Names
• The Day I Caught The Sun
• Acceptance
• Man of Châlons
• Silence is.
• When I Was Younger And You Were Not
• imagine the deep
• On Regret
• No Kings
• On Mortality, December 1980
• Also Known As
• 4 a.m. it slithers
• Excerpts From a Voicemail
• Every 29 Hours
• Oil
• Stars(through the whiskey-grey
• Last Light
• Rain Come Down
• How To Hold a Woman
• Kiss Me Like This
• This Is How I Brush My Hair
• A Slowspun Mymn
• Putting It Back Together
• And Then She Did It Anyway
• Today and Today and Today

Please enjoy these excerpted poems. Review them if you'd like to. All 10 of them will be included in the book, along with many many more. (The entire collection is 57 pages long, and represents over 10 years of work.) I hope you will consider purchasing a copy on Amazon or at your favorite brick-and-mortar book store. I'm told the price point will be under $10, so it should be very reasonable.

Thank you, OCPoetry, for coming with me on this incredible journey, and for supporting me and my work. I couldn't have done any of this without you.

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