Preservation of a Vanishing World

By Kelle Roberts

Have you ever seen old buildings or ghost towns and wondered who lived there decades ago and if their ghosts still haunt them? Preservation of a Vanishing World answers these questions blending micro-fiction, persona poetry, and the essence of place. Inspired by forgotten spaces and lives, these poems reach out and grasp for those who have been hidden inside memories and seek to find them again.

In her powerful debut collection of poetry, Kelle Roberts discovers continuity between place and experience. Influenced by the dark romanticism of the nineteenth century and modernist poets of the twentieth century, Roberts writes a love letter to the past filled with hope and heartache. Her poetry tackles complex themes of family, love, loss, and the ability to preserve parts of ourselves eclipsed in the passing ages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781667820804

Book preview

Chapter I.

Mayonnaise on Moon

I spent it all on words,

Every last hope I’ve had.

Words thrown like dice,

Hard clatter against cold alley walls

Flung past puddles reflecting the sky above.

Words hidden like treasure,

Rubies buried

With my humble hands

Under a flood of moonlight.

Words cloak my loneliness and

Change the shape of my doubt

About whom, I will become

The mark I will leave

In the end.

I spent it all on words,

An endless search for angels in

The frozen violet deep night sky.

Brothers

For Richard Hugo

The collective memory of what this town used to be,

Its glory days have been loosed from rocky earth

Sent tumbling down,

And now sleeps in the cemetery along with the economy,

You will never leave.

We will never leave.

Her red hair lit the wall.

I flick my cigarette at the truck that sits like Medusa

Covered in black leaves outside of our house,

The sparks shatter like stars in the sky.

I look in your direction,

You’re a stone in that old recliner.

It’s been there since dad died,

Longing for human touch as spring,

Vibrates beneath the branches of winter,

She left years ago.

You never asked her to stay,

Never reconciled her splintered heart, and just like

Dogs on ropes barking, hopelessly,

Into empty streets

Say no to yourself, rub the nickel in your pocket,