Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
Burning the Book
The reader is tiredof her book
its many charactersits twists and turns
of plotshe feels a sadnessfor the trees
cut and pulpedto make the paperthe writer
toiling at his deskshe lets it drop
into the firewrithing
open as ifall it wanted
was to flower againher face aglow
aghastin booklightthe gray petals
freckled with lettersthe paper
collapsing into ash
The fourth poetry collection by John Witte is Disquiet (University of Washington Press, 2015). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, AGNI, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere, and have been included in The Norton Introduction to Literature, among other anthologies. He is the author of Loving the Days (Wesleyan University Press, 1978), The Hurtling (Orchises Press, 2005), and Second Nature (University of Washington Press, 2008). He is also the editor of numerous books, including The Collected Poems of Hazel Hall (Oregon State University Press, 2000). The recipient of two writing fellowships from the NEA, a residency at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and other grants and awards, he lives with his family in Eugene, Oregon, where he teaches literature at the University of Oregon. (updated 10/2015)