MOUNDS OF BOOKS OUTSIDE OF NASHVILLE

by Zebulon Huset

My freshmen students start Fahrenheit 451 next week—

today a Tennessee pastor lights back into the old chestnut

 

of Harry Potter infecting children with witchcraft or Twilight 

spreading the cheesy demons of vampiric thoughts. Roiling 

 

on the self-righteous fury of the Neo-Nazi echo chamber

that rebounds cacophonous  insecurities and fear like

 

the crystals that create a great fortress of solitude. Riled 

up by the downfall of monuments raised by Daughters

 

of the Confederacy, by schools teaching history

that covers even half of the truth about their great

 

grandparents, by the ricocheting of rage. Opposite

of a sensory deprivation tank that saps sounds

 

and light and leaves one with just the mortal drumbeat,

overwhelming sound of blood pulsing through ear-arteries.

 

The realization that self is both loud and fragile,

that our brittle hold on life can crumble at any moment

 

and it’s not witchcraft or the past that are frothing

at the doorway of extremism, but the hand grasping

 

the bulk-purchased bottle of lighter fluid, the voice

booming from their own mouths, the fire lapping

 

their stubby little fingertips.

 

Zebulon Huset is a teacher, writer and photographer. He won the Gulf Stream 2020 Summer Poetry Contest and his writing has appeared in Best New Poets, Rattle, Texas Review, North American Review, Meridian, The Southern Review, Fence, and many others. He publishes the prompt blog Notebooking Daily, and edits the journals Coastal Shelf and Sparked.

BRADBURY LANDING

by Alejandro Escudé

The canary yellow L.A. home where “Fahrenheit 451” author Ray Bradbury resided for more than 50 years was demolished last week, according to the Los Angeles Times. The culprit: none other than Thom Mayne. The Pritzker winner has never been known to be nostalgic; in the wake of MoMA’s decision to raze the Tod Williams Billie Tsien's American Folk Art Museum, he had noted simply that, “All of our work issomewhat ephemeral.” So it comes as little surprise that shortly after he and wife Blythe Alison-Mayne purchased Bradbury’s former property for $1.76 million, the Times reports, the walls started coming down. --Janelle Zara, Architizer, January 20, 2015. Photo by John King Tarpinian, File 770.

"Bradbury Landing is a place on the planet Mars located in Gale crater. It marks the landing site of Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover on August 6, 2012. The location was named by NASA for Ray Bradbury on August 22, 2012, his 92nd birthday, in honor of the author who died a few months earlier, on June 5. The coordinates of the landing site are: 4.5895°S 137.4417°E." --Wikipedia

In a dream last night
My young son and I
Descended the steps
To the Bradbury house
Basement, where he
Wrote most of his work,
The walls lined with
Posters of book covers:
Fahrenheit 451 and
The Martian Chronicles,
Scent of used books
And typewriter oil.
And there, as I placed
An arm around my son,
Sat Bradbury’s desk,
The man who has a
Spot on Mars named
After him, untouched,
And I’m sure untouched
Even when Mars itself
Is finally developed
By future architects.
My life is ephemeral,
My son’s life too, yet
I recall, in that dream,
Thinking with absolute
Wonder, how the house,
The Ray Bradbury House,
Smelled of used books
And typewriter oil.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems, My Earthbound Eye, in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.