The thing about the book given to me
for Christmas one year when I was a kid
(I never got a book for a birthday
present–don’t quite know why, just never did)
is that I still blow a kiss to my aunt
each time I open it (and she’s long dead)
or any like it. A book’s a present
still present lifetimes after it’s been read.
James B. Nicola’s nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice magazine award. The latest of his eight full-length poetry collections is Natural Tendencies. A returning contributor to Underwood and graduate of Yale, he hosts the Hell’s Kitchen International Writers’ Round Table at his library branch in Manhattan: walk-ins welcome.
“The Thing about the Book” originally appeared in Wingless Dreamer.