I do not love Brautigan’s poetry so much as his prose, but I like the idea of a good-talking candle, a pan full of frying flowers, and a land where children love spiders, and let them sleep in their hair. My favorites are, A Baseball Game Part 7 (all of the Baudelaire adventures are pretty awesome, but this is the best), Boo, Forever, and
“A Mid-February Sky Dance”
Dance toward me, please, as
if you were a star
with light-years piled
on top of your hair,
smiling,
and I will dance toward you
as if I were darkness
with bats piled like a hat
on top of my head.
l noelle mclaughlin 