The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe read by Sir Christopher Lee

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American Reading Habits

One in Four Read No Books Last Year

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By ALAN FRAM

The Associated Press
Tuesday, August 21, 2007; 11:06 PM

WASHINGTON -- There it sits on your night stand, that book you've meant to read for who knows how long but haven't yet cracked open. Tonight, as you feel its stare from beneath that teetering pile of magazines, know one thing _ you are not alone.

One in four adults read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Of those who did read, women and older people were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices.
The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can hardly be called ravenous. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year _ half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn't read any, the usual number read was seven.

The Question and the Axe

She axed him a question
by chopping up the
grammar & syntax
and killing the pro
nunciation.

Decapitated
in midair,
the bloody
head of the question
rolled on the floor.

But you should see
the unnatural acts
she performs
on the poor apostrophe.

David Cooper
published in TYCA-Southeast Journal (Fall, 2013), 17.

Georgia On My Mind

            The gray day

                                    And the red clay

                                    Of Georgia’s dust tracks

                                    Of mind and memory

                                    Haunt

                                    me at 3 a.m.

                                    Ghosts walk

                                    til dawn

                                    drawn by the

                                    darkness and

                                    rain.

                                    Fallen path of lost

                                    Love and lust:

                                    Mary the tall girl

with liquid eyes;

                                    Belinda the tiny

                                    Redbone*

                                    With a sandy afro;

                                    And Brenda

                                    With smooth ebony skin—

                                    Of years and yore—

                                    All gone

                                    Like the red clay

                                    Washed over the road…gone.

*Redbone: a high yellow girl; a mulatto or quadroon.

                                    

Far Right

            The blue Volvo

                                    Cruised down the road.

                                    On the bumper

                                    Was one sticker:

                                    Republicans For Voldemort.