William Repass


USED BOOKS
a Roman à clef

Table of Contents:

Chapter i: How to Mount Your Bargain-Hunting Trophies
Chapter ii: The Tricorn Hat
Chapter iii: To Smother a Bonfire
Chapter iv: Handsome Paperweight (that’s just slick sick)
Chapter v: Bricks in a Pinch: Precarious Towers, Barricades
Chapter vi: Receipt Paper
Chapter vii: The Dumbbell
Chapter viii: Fiery Pants and Other Tales
Chapter ix: The Paper Cut Dispenser
Chapter x: The Trencher
Chapter xi: Leather Binding Recipes
Chapter xii: Of Toiletry
Chapter xiii: How They Made Their Own Suspenders
Chapter xiv: Bridge Over the Gap Between Cabinets
Chapter xv: Itsy-bitsy Pepperpot Derringer Storage
Chapter xvi: 55 Dream Images to Flummox Freud
Chapter xvii: Boomerang!
Chapter xviii: Birdcage Furniture
Chapter xix: Masturbation Tools for Metaphor-Fetishists
Chapter xx: A Very Temporary Raft
Chapter xxi: The Fern & Spider Press
Chapter xxii: Shoes? Clogs
Chapter xxiii: The Mold Collector
Chapter xxiv: A Tree with Facial Knots & Hollow
Chapter xxv: Boomerang!



TID BIT

Go and gobble then—what’s one more bologna dipper in the scheme of things?—and shimmy on in to arcadian combat. One carton Magritte® cigarettes (unfiltered), two rations vodka в день. But that was back then though, when the cubist influence on camouflage cut mustard not at all. Nowadays, mayonnaise patterns ape VOTE FOR signage all over again, as per sturgeon generalissimo fiat. No ass garde holds out for a caviar saltine. Blubbery, glinting w/ medals, mayorals vie for each block party, every neighborhood watch committee. Flagellate the public purse with its own lip strings.

Oh, justice smidgen for me, thanks. Retreat and keep nose clean at all costs. Vigilantes bust ass, their mussel loaders attached by umbilical means. Help yourself. Depress belly button to reload. No help your self, I do insist.



GONG FARM

huh an ort sledge for
hammering mulch flatter for
inflationary er measures
canned hammier fist and
boot squelch maneuvers
rubes versus burghers
yup but how do you figure a
figurine out by way of
smithereens an off whitish sham
truffle hunt for say abnormal
gait or memory caesurae say
that’s symptomatic geez is it
pfennig camphor or neuro syphilis
belch hors d’oeuvre
flatus of ordure accounting to the uh
ledger uh the pigsty latrine
philistines by
golly I had no idea



GULP D’ÉTAT

Alleyoop and be deputized to carry out sclerotic whim. Clammy nationalism lost to—shoop—the newfangled vacüum.

Witness report as follows: The larger fellow wears a look of profound indifference, even as the crown-powered submersible breaches nearby, in order that the smaller fellow may pop the hatch, let slip

balloons. The King is, so claims distended lettering, kaput. Beet heart gleaned. Translation:

assassinated by Honest Agnes with her notable instrument, seconds before she escaped beneath the waves. So inscrutable are the secret police, so woven in the fabric of etc., that they are nowhere to be found. But then

again, the heart patches sewn by order of our (former) monarch on the skins of his subjects fail to bleed for him, and every window sill reverts to botanical garden.

Succulents of the world, scenting desert, dip their spines in poison and wink profusely.




William Repass lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA. His poetry has appeared in Bennington Review, Denver Quarterly, Hobart, Small Po[r]tions, and elsewhere.
 
 
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