Catherine Barnett's Second Book: Worth Waiting For!

Catherine Barnett is a poet you need to read if you are of this century but also a little bit lost in the past. This is a beautiful book that invites the reader into a crystalized world --- written --- I can only suspect --- long past midnight. The poems are meditations on urban life told with perfect pitch of high and low culture. the game of boxes ( starred review in Publisher's Weekly)is my pick this week.

Inventory

Down at the grocery store, tacked to the board
flapping in the wind,
the business card says
"Husband 4 a Day."
She takes a few,
tucks them into May, then June,

but now it's August
and she says the boy can use them
as bookmarks, placeholders,
kindling. She's still like a husband,
or at least a keepsake,
a light switches on

when anyone comes near.
She'd like more books, fewer rocks,
a path in the woods.
At night she hears knocking
from the fields, something
undoes in the wind.

In the morning, the floors creak
and hum because what's gone
is also there, singing
inside the clutch of stones
the boy slingshots into air.

Catherine Barnett, the game of boxes