Bilston’s Index of Discarded First Lines

At the top of the show, I shared a poem from Brian Bilston, whose new book is called Days Like These. He posts poems on the internet just about every day, and I wanted to share part of one. It’s called Index of Discarded First Lines. It looks like an index with the first line and then dot dot dot dot dot and then the page number. So I just want to share a few lines from this poem called Index of Discarded First Lines.

Also, I am bleeding profusely, so please stay for a while. Dot dot dot. Eight. I am a bowl chipped at the rim. Forty-three. Me and you in matching tank tops. Thirty-nine. Our love is like a broken oat cake. Sixty-one. That, my dear, is a diphthong.

And there are just a lot of these. And I just, they’re great writing prompts, don’t you think?

I absolutely do.

But it is about the weird intimacy of life with other people. The strangeness of the topics that come up and the things that you say to each other.

Right.

For that was the winter we listened to Enya.

Right.

If you could have an index for your life with your loved ones, it would be equally as strange. All the odd things that you say, and you would be red-faced at some of them.

So if you follow Brian Bilston on social media, you can enjoy these poems on a regular basis.

And in the meantime, we’d love to talk with you about language, so give us a call, 877-929-9673.