Elephant Proof

By Jon Olseth

Olseth writes with Ernest Hemingway in a Paris cafe, gets his first-ever straight razor shave, explores the benefits of being deaf in one ear, and eulogizes eight things never to bring up at dinner.

With over 50 poems, Elephant Proof chronicles those moments when the ordinary meets the extraordinary - when the dead speak to the living, women powder their noses, and the moth, tucked in the doorframe, waits for evening to unfold its wings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Olseth
• Release date: May 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201121730

Book preview

Elephant Proof - Poems

Copyright © 2022 Jon Olseth

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Cover art, design, and interior art and layout by Terry Roy

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First Ebook Edition

Elephant Proof

Jon Olseth

elephant1

Poems

Contents

In Café Le Deaux Palais with Ernest Hemingway xiii

One

Le Soleil

My 17th-Century Chateau During Our Summer Stay in Laval-Saint-Roman

A Month of Saturdays

Paris 7/23/19 – Shakespeare and Company and Café Le Deaux Palais

To Another Stranger

In Line for The Pizza Truck

My First Ever Straight Razor Shave at Big Moustache Beaumarchais, Paris

Ascending The Balcony Road

After Breakfast In the Courtyard of Église Saint-Martin

The Passion Flowers of Rue de Pantecouste

Paris 7/23/19 – Café Le Deaux Palais

The Artist’s House

While You are Off on a Run in the Foothills

of Camp de César

Again In the Courtyard of Église Saint-Martin

or Beauty Trills in the Sunlight, The Heart is Nestled in the Shadows

Professors of Philosophy

The Bull in Picasso’s Final Lithograph at

The Musée Picasso-Paris

Paris 7/23/19 – Le Bastille Guest House

Reflecting On My Insecurities at the

Security Checkpoint

Two

The Benefits of Being Deaf in One Ear

Elephant Proof

Reading Henry David Thoreau’s WALDEN

at the Cabin After Heating Up My

Coffee in the Microwave

Ode to the Paper Roadmap

Epigraph as Epitaph

Andrew Wyeth’s Famous 1948 Painting, Christina’s World

Never Write a Poem About Writing a Poem

Remembering Conjunction Junction

The Dog In Your Underwear

Limbo

Upon Finding a Book Written by Cary Grant’s Wife Dyan Cannon in a Palm Springs VRBO

Almost As Good As Being Alone

Another Failed Attempt at Writing Poetry

Ice-Out

Mushroom Hunting

The Only Poem I’ll Ever Write About

My Father’s Dementia

Three

Sabbatical

The Grim Reader

The Powder Room

The Flame of Spring

From Emily—and Me

The Bishop Sliding Over the Chessboard

Izzy’s Steaks & Chops

Eight Things Never to Bring Up at Dinner

Combine

Antietam

Sheering Sheep

Charlie at the Bank

My Father’s Galoshes

When My Dog Starts Licking Herself

Keeping Record in Key West

The Notion of Considering Dinner Options

Well Before Having Breakfast

The Night I Missed Your Death

Isabelline

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Why do you want to read a dead man? Can’t you see that he is dead?

—Gertrude Stein to Ernest Hemingway,

A Moveable Feast

In Café Le Deaux Palais with Ernest Hemingway

You belong to me