LOVE SONG FOR PYROMANIACS AND LIBRARIANS
/The game is pick quick and decide you’ve won.I’m studying tricks to break the dictionary’shold; I’m drawing flowcharts for how to fieldquestions like We’re making plans to burnyour latest essays; the order’s been written,so how do you feel? Well, I feel the world’sa fine place for a book burning. Whirledby your latest regarding how to fill onevolume when what’s required is two, I’ve writtenan exposé titled Forget his Old Dictionary—the Devil’s got a New Copywriter. If I burneda love song that went up like a farmer’s field,would you love me, armored, when we’re battle-filled?My best tactic’s direct assault, but the world’slost faith in Sherman’s and Hannibal’s burn-crusades—advertised as The Battle’s Already Wonand the Bird’s Still in the Oven. All the dictionariesagree: secret messages should be writtenin blood. So we loaded blanks and faked it. Writ inthe language, historians will later claim, of fieldworkers and machinists, the pair’s dictionarywreaked havoc in classrooms around the world.Readers are likely to confuse the two sides: one’sa clever witch posing on her stick; I’m just a burn-out in the last stages of system-failure. Burnme a river and I’ll say sorry for all I’ve writtenin bathroom stalls. Third floor: There oncewas a girl from Chartres / Who walked through a fieldstealing hearts. / Her hips looked the world /Like a boat’s sails unfurled, / But in the dictionaryshe’s under “tarts.” You can find in this dictionarydetailed instructions on how best to burn old cathedrals down or diagrams of imaginary world war technology—but they probably got written off as a paranoid’s dream. Sorry. You’re the grass field hiding a hundred tunnels, and I’m the onewith one dumb arm in the dictionary’s maw, field-stripped, storm-burnt, accident-written, secret-whirled.____Daniel Carter's chapbook, Here Both Sweeter, won the Wick Chapbook Contest and is forthcoming from Kent State University Press. Another chapbook, This Apparatus, is forthcoming from Furniture Press.
