Readers
In celebration of National Book Month, a poem about little free libraries, those humble guardians of literature that stand watch in our neighborhoods.
The tiny library
leans like a drunk
on its old friend
the mailbox, tripping
into late spring
over a tangle
of honeysuckle,
falling slowly
and without witness
towards the ditch.
It looks worried
about the future,
though its head
is an empty room
filled with the light
of another morning.
About the author
Dan Leach is the author ofStray Latitudes,winner of the 2024 Southern Poetry Breakthrough Award from Texas Review Press, and two collections of short fiction:Floods and Fires(University of North Georgia, 2017) andDead Mediums(Trident Press, 2022). His work has appeared inNew Orleans Review, Copper Nickel, The Massachusetts Review, The Southwest Review, andThe Sun. He lives in the lowcountry of South Carolina and teaches writing at Charleston Southern University.