Library Shenanigans

library poetry shenanigans

October 19, 2012 at 2:56 pm 1 comment

My new collection of poems, Injecting Dreams into Cows (Red Hen Press, 2012), contains several poems about libraries and least one about library shenanigans. One of the library poems has now become the victim/beneficiary of an anonymous shenanigan here at Tutt Library, Colorado College!

“Going to the Library,” was made into a promotional flyer for Tutt (where I work). Copies of this flyer hang in campus bathrooms. This morning a colleague found an amended version of the flyer in one of the library bathrooms. Someone turned my sweet little poem into a piece of smut!!

Less scandalously, in the library shenanigan poem in the book, “The Library at Night,” the shenanigans are perpetrated by the books themselves:

The Library At Night

The empty library
stutters awake, words
falling out of their paper beds,
alarms of exclamation points
ringing from every corner.

The librarians are gone,
sound asleep at home,
shushing their dreams.

They have forgotten
all about the library
and what is inside.

This is why, in the morning,
the books are not where
they are supposed to be.

This is why, in the daytime,
the library feels vaguely alive,
objects pulsating on the shelves,
glowing like brains.

(first appeared in The Hat, 2005)

Entry filed under: books, perpetrated by staff, Tutt Library Colorado College.