The Fool’s Tower
By
Tom Barrett
A trek along a wooded trail brings us
to a solitary cottage. We find the writer
in the study among scores of dusty writings
both shelved and strewn upon a marble
tabletop and across the woodblock floor.
These books are mostly bound in leather
with gilt titles stamped in an unknown
alphabet above an ouroboric colophon.
Their author is also bound in leather,
trussed as if ready for the oven, his spine
cracked and broken and with marks of
previous ligature still visible on his
dessicated flesh. We gently lift a moribund
wrist that simply crumbles at our touch.
We gently lift several volumes at random,
perhaps to decipher the poetry within
but they are all uncut, undated, with no
isbn or publishing information to see.
After some lengthy whispered deliberation,
we stack a number of them upon the gas-
fueled hearth, set it afire, and resume our
ramble to a meadow below. Some weeks
later, a passing itinerant takes pause before
the wreckage and traces his initials and
those of his love in the ash that remains.
Tom Barrett is based near Houston, Texas, holds an MFA and has been published in Peter Gizzi’s Oblek magazine as well as several collections from Black Scat Books.
By
Tom Barrett
A trek along a wooded trail brings us
to a solitary cottage. We find the writer
in the study among scores of dusty writings
both shelved and strewn upon a marble
tabletop and across the woodblock floor.
These books are mostly bound in leather
with gilt titles stamped in an unknown
alphabet above an ouroboric colophon.
Their author is also bound in leather,
trussed as if ready for the oven, his spine
cracked and broken and with marks of
previous ligature still visible on his
dessicated flesh. We gently lift a moribund
wrist that simply crumbles at our touch.
We gently lift several volumes at random,
perhaps to decipher the poetry within
but they are all uncut, undated, with no
isbn or publishing information to see.
After some lengthy whispered deliberation,
we stack a number of them upon the gas-
fueled hearth, set it afire, and resume our
ramble to a meadow below. Some weeks
later, a passing itinerant takes pause before
the wreckage and traces his initials and
those of his love in the ash that remains.
Tom Barrett is based near Houston, Texas, holds an MFA and has been published in Peter Gizzi’s Oblek magazine as well as several collections from Black Scat Books.
