My Mother’s Robe by L.I. Henley

I wear my mother’s terrycloth

four in the morning back in her home

renting for cheap while it waits to be sold & I wait

for a signal

wait for the coffee machine to finish

for ancient crumbs

in the knife grooves of the cutting board

to tell me a story

how to solve the equation of winter

plus no propane

plus no wood

The answer is always

So what

I like it that way…

Hello old home! Hello hard pain!

* * *

Maybe I am building sure

hammering something into shape

something that can be hammered

stone or leather

something

There is air moving through

a conch that I have never seen but often hear

louder & louder

it is carried to whatever desert I fling myself

it arrives in the early morning

& I must get up get up & do what?

Dance around a bit drink coffee fast

go to work

I am my own little shadow

& someday my body will give the gift

of availability the easiest way it can

which is to say it will stop

* * *

Here we do not recognize walls as walls

& so the weather lives with us always

Last night I dreamed again about the meth-head

neighbor who drove right through

our chain-link gate

Today you & I will burn the stumps

lining my mother’s driveway

After that we’ll take apart the redwood fence

that I used to seal & re-seal for summer cash

Today I heard a voice rushing through a conch

& got up to find the mouth Today

my mother’s robe

is wearing me around

Keeping Our Own Names

We have one photo of the courthouse wedding

us in our shorts with two of my grandparents

in attendance champagne & cold cuts came after

My grandfather the retired naval officer

was only a year from death & so

drank the most blessed us with his dancing

For the honeymoon we moved

to a cabin in Joshua Tree where

scorpions ran around the porch

like Arabian horses Tarantulas

with monkey faces moved in like carnivals

that broke down & never left

We made a movie about escaped convicts

living on the lamb

poured brandy on our collection of stab wounds

gleamed from the local bars

& ha remember how worried they got

when we decided to stay ourselves?

L.I. Henley was born and raised in the Mojave Desert village of Joshua Tree, California. Her chapbooks include Desert with a Cabin View and The Finding, both from Orange Monkey Press. Her full-length, THESE FRIENDS THESE ROOMS, will be published by Big Yes Press in June, 2016. She is the recipient of the Academy of American Poets University Award, the Duckabush Poetry Prize, and the Orange Monkey Publishing Prize. Her work has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, RHINO Magazine, Main Street Rag, Askew, and other places. She co-owns and edits the online (and soon to be print) journal Apercus Quarterly with her husband, poet Jonathan Maule. Despite having multiple auto-immune conditions, she is an amateur bodybuilder and is studying to become a personal trainer.

Michael J. Orlich

San Bernardino Streets

Baseline

I come from the west.

You have to start somewhere.

I can see straight

down this road

for miles, but not today.

The arroyo is big, empty.

A woman picks.

Walls of comfort have gaps.

Across the tracks, the Meridian.

Arroyo Valley hawks circle

the stadium.

Tacos Mexican (what other kind?),

Rico Taco, Taco Grinch, Taco Central, Tacos L, Taco Bender.

Across the great river

of north and southbound lanes,

the smog corner, the fun corner.

Quick pawn. Fame liquor.

Dollar king, dollar tree, dollar general,

all Smart and Final.

Crossing Waterman. I don’t know, Jack-

Is there a way out-of-the-Box?

The road is rising.

Milk dairy. Crazy Frank’s.

Auto spa, center, zone.

Universal Tires and Unified Baptists—

let them introduce you to the way.

Gina’s thrift, Charlie’s cars, Dale’s TV, Sam’s something.

Pain’s corner. Wayne’s RV storage. The House of Plywood.

Pepper tree restaurant.

Sam’s bargains. Gina’s thrift store again.

Maybe it moved already.

Sam and Gina seem to get around. (Or was it Gino?)

Welcome to High-land.

Sterling Street—still waiting for gold.

D&D furniture. The next sign explains.

Debt and Depression.

Three towers point the way—

open spaces, climbing.

Mobile homes—still.

Eternal fire is burning.

The police stand watching.

The churches sit on Church Avenue:

First United Methodist (must have beat the Baptists).

Saint Adelaide’s. A graceful spire.

A proud tower. A gilded arch

against the mountain peak—

San Bernardino looms large.

Straight ahead. Above the orange blossoms.

A marker laid down.

A city laid out.

A street laid straight. Again?

You have to start somewhere.

E Street

The SBX (its name

almost exciting

for a bus) says

“out of service”—

seeming sadly wise

despite its shiny

red paint and CNG

and dedicated lanes

and high capacity

(for emptiness) in this

broad valley of open

urban spaces.

The sign

red and square

arched and gold

says 15¢ hamburgers

and a many-zeroed number sold,

but none for sale

here and now—

for what prophet

remembers his home

when profit calls?

But burgers endure

at burger-market and -mania

the little Gus

the In-’N-Out-backed

Harley man, he too riding

shiny red, without

the empty seats.

Other tarnished temples

remain and retain

or try to recall

an uncertain sanctity

of short school days

sleek, long cars

fresh, sweet citrus

and sixty-six—

remembered now by

the family service center

the Asian seafood market

NAPA’s omnipresent parts

trucks and taquerias

the Indian-band ballpark

Christ, the scientist

and other vacancies,

a shrined (or coffined) carousel.

Above it all

in sparkling steel and glass

a block or two off Easy Street—

the Center of Justice.

Waterman

I travel south, the way of waters

fleeing down from the mountains,

the old Arrowhead pointing the way,

where water brought healing and hype,

where drought is bottled

and shipped for sale;

to the center of town,

the hallowed and the hollow,

with its Wienerschnitzels and wigs,

that center of dismantling

where it’s legal to pick-a-part,

with bail bonds and bótanicas

for those who suffer.

The left promises to deliver

as trucks back up to

endless bays without water,

which is pumped from the ground

toward the sea it will not reach,

ions exchanged for its TCE.

Roofing tiles sit stacked, silent.

Golf greens fly flags and flowers

in mourning.

Drab green fencing

seeks to hide the horror

so fresh, foreign, familiar.

The road goes on

watered by tears,

and ends in a Little Hill

in the place of remembering.

Michael Orlich began writing poetry in 2011. Since then, he has hosted a small monthly poetry group in his home in Reche Canyon, in Colton. He has lived in the IE since 2008 and works at Loma Linda University as a preventive medicine physician and researcher in nutritional epidemiology.

Cynthia Anderson

A Tale of the Pleiades

On the longest night

they glow in the east,

a glittering diamond clasp—

sisters who flee their father

who decide to die together,

who escape to the heavens

to find a new home,

who shine from there

on Coyote. Found out,

they let him prevail,

let him ride to the stars

on the back of the youngest

who throws him off

when he cannot keep

his hands or his penis

to himself—

And though he falls

to earth and dies,

that does not stop him.

Bird songs tell

how the sisters rise

in their diadem of safety

while Coyote howls,

incorrigible

and immortal.

Cynthia Anderson lives in the Mojave Desert near Joshua Tree National Park. Her award-winning poems have appeared in journals such as Askew, Dark Matter, Apercus Quarterly, Whale Road, Knot Magazine, and Origami Poems Project. She is the author of five collections—”In the Mojave,” “Desert Dweller,” “Mythic Rockscapes,” and “Shared Visions I” and “Shared Visions II.” She frequently collaborates with her husband, photographer Bill Dahl. Cynthia co-edited the anthology A Bird Black As the Sun: California Poets on Crows & Ravens.

Ryan Mattern

The Wind in Stanzas

He came to town and stomped the dust from his boots in our entryways and blushed when our daughters knelt to clean them. He urged us all medicine from vials. Trees matured from a twisted cap. Their roots took home in the crooks of sifted rabbit holes. He shaped the wheel from plowing squares and wore a halo of blurring mosquitoes. He measured the wind in stanzas and sang out in light from the fields. When it was time, he packed our secrets in a suitcase and walked to the edge of the village. His distance came at a price of haze, a man at odds with the sun.

Ryan Mattern holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from California State University, San Bernardino and M.A. in English from the University of California, Davis. He is the recipient of the Felix Valdez Award for Short Fiction. His work has been published in Ghost Town, THE2NDHAND, Poetry Quarterly, and The Red Wheelbarrow, among others. He currently serves in the United States Army.

Robin Dawn Hudechek

Thirsty Leaves

(The California Drought, years later)

The only clouds we see are

useless as smoke. I walk alone

on blistered roads crisscrossed in veins

of tar. Few cars pass.

The sky above us is burning.

My water bottle shimmers,

a liquid jewel. When I set it down, tree limbs

bend, shading the spot above my head.

Perhaps now, the peeling eucalyptus will begin to heal.

We should have fixed this years ago,

gathered the water in ancient pots and cisterns

as desert dwelling peoples have always done.

Now oak tree limbs are exposed bones

and the people have gone.

Nomads, heads bent under broad hats,

shielding sunburnt faces

return in tens of thousands

to the states of their parents

and grandparents, understanding only now

what their grandparents understood

from the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression.

Some moments should never be forgotten.

When a stranger with parched lips

lifts his head, let him drink.

Pour the last drops of water on the mound

below the tree trunk. Sprinkle drops on exposed roots

and whisper: it’s raining. Thirsty leaves curl inward,

catching precious blades of water.

It’s raining. Soon the sky will wash away,

this empty sky scorching our hills,

until we are all laid flat and bare,

and the rain washes over our faces

and pours into the open palms of leaves,

a singular blessing: first a sip, then a drink.

Breathing in Water

I was nine when my mother took me fishing

and taught me how to use live worms as bait.

Impaled and wriggling on a fishhook,

their last moments of life

were as cruel as any death sentence

handed down in a human court.

They were caught in the indifferent jaws

of fish, who would meet death by suffocation

at the end of a line, thrashing

and rippling waves behind them

threaded in blood, pierced by the hook

as Christ was, by a centurion’s sword.

Yanking hooks from slippery bodies

we dropped them into our pail.

Feeling sorry for these fish

with their gills rising and falling

in currents of air when they

should have been breathing in water

we tossed them back.

No one mentioned the puddle of

red that appeared behind their fins

on the water. No one thought of

the predators who would be drawn to that blood

by our careless hooks.

Doesn’t it hurt? I asked on behalf

of worms and fish who would never speak.

My mother shook her head. Worms have no feeling.

Why then did the worm’s head curl and twist,

and bunch lower in my fingers whenever

the metal point of the hook drew near?

My mother had no answer.

The Woodsman

The tree is a lens, an ancient eye

blinking, a web of frost

melting in an empty socket,

a pond disturbed.

He can feel it burning.

Sleet scars the bark in icy lashes; he circles it with his hands.

The tree is a throbbing vein; he can hear it breathing.

The woodsman laughs, and lifts his axe,

dreaming of a house flickering warmth,

a candle tucked among snow drifts.

Soon his children will scramble onto his lap,

a daughter and son

who know nothing of trees and sap

their arms and legs, tender as branches

tangling playfully.

Mallards and Blue Geese rise up from their streams

as the axe falls and the trunk splits into halves, then quarters.

Two hawks circle the sky

and a field mouse sniffs the wind.

A shadow of a wing catches the man by his foot,

a shadow of a wing drops over his head.

The tree is a heart.

To save himself he must slow its beating,

lift the axe once more.

A deer emerges from the woods and blinks at him.

a single horned owl perches in its trunk nest.

The woodsman coughs and raises his hand to shield his face.

From behind rocks and under branches,

he can feel their eyes

on his boots and the back of his neck.

The forest is a cacophony of cricket song and scratching claws,

hooves advancing in new snow

and the mournful howl of wolves.

Eyes moist and teeth bared, glinting in the moonlight,

they are waiting for the axe to swing

the wrong way,

and the woodsman’s leg, to fall–

severed from his body

sky throbbing red in his ears.

Robin Dawn Hudechek received her MFA in creative writing, poetry from UCI. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications including Caliban, Cream City Review, Blue Arc West: An Anthology of California Poets, Cadence Collective, Gutters and Alleyways: Perspectives on Poverty and Struggle, East Jasmine Review, Hedgerow: a journal of small poems, Silver Birch Press, Right Hand Pointing, Calibanonline and work forthcoming in Chiron Review. She lives in Laguna Beach, CA with her husband, Manny and two beautiful cats, Ashley and Misty. More of her poetry can be found at robindawnh.wordpress.com

John Brantingham

A Kind of Social Justice

They hold Dale’s retirement breakfast in the far corner of a ballroom on a Friday morning, forty-three people huddled together in a room meant for two thousand. That’s all right, he supposes, as is the gold watch and the handshakes and sentiments, but he’s happy to get out of there. When he does, he’s surprised at the lack of sentiment he has for Continental Works, his boss, coworkers, and the profession of civil engineering.

Mostly what he thinks about as he drives through this neighborhood is how closely his life has stayed on the little path he thought it would take. His retirement party after all is in the town where he went to college. On a whim, he drives up to the old neighborhood in Claremont where he rented a backhouse, he and his three roommates, one of them the only black person he knew in the entire city.

He parks in front of the place and can see into the yard. The mother-in-law house they used to rent is gone, replaced by a giant pool. Across the street there is an open house, and Dale goes in. He’s still wearing his suit and tie from the breakfast, and the woman who’s selling it gives him a quick look and smiles broadly. “Hi, you in the market for a home?”

“No,” Dale says without bothering to think about a lie. “I was in the neighborhood, and I was remembering a time when I broke into this place as a kid. I wanted to see if it had changed.”

Once it’s out of his mouth, Dale can hear how it sounds, wonders if he’s scared the poor woman, but she cocks her head, shifts her weight to her other leg, and laughs. “Well, I’ve never heard that one before. What, are you just getting out of prison today?”

“No, it wasn’t like that.” Dale smiles. “It was a dare in college. I used to live with a black guy named Stuart. I was trying to prove to him that it wasn’t any easier being white than it was being black.”

The real estate agent laughs again. She knows how to do it so it doesn’t feel fake the way he’d expect from someone trying to sell him a house. Maybe it is real, too. She leans against a doorjamb framing herself in front of a window onto the backyard. “Did you actually believe that?”

“Sure. I was young. There was a big party going on across the street, and he said he bet I could just walk on in, and no one would stop me, but they’d probably call the cops on him.”

“And?”

“And they stopped him at the door.”

“And you?” She folds her arms.

Dale shrugs. “I walked right in. It was a wedding reception, and no one had any idea who I was. I just put on a tie, and no one thought to question me. When Stuart came in, they did everything but call the cops.”

“You’re like me.” She smiles at him. “You’ve had just one big indiscretion in life, right?”

“Yeah, but that’s not the end of the story. I got a drink at the open bar and a steak, and I knew that Stuart had been right. I sat there talking to the bride’s sister, who was feeling bad about her dress, and I realized that I could do pretty much anything I wanted in this house.”

“You mean to her?”

He shakes his head. “No, not like that.” He thinks a moment. “I guess maybe like that too. I mean if I wanted to. I realized that I walked around like I came from money, which I did, and that meant people looked at me differently.”

“So what did you do?”

Dale can feel himself blushing. He’s never admitted this part of the story to anyone in his life. “Well, I went into the bedroom where all the purses and jackets were, and I stole a couple hundred dollars out of a woman’s wallet.”

She covers her mouth with her hand. “Seriously?”

“I took Stuart on a road trip to Vegas and thought of it as a kind of social justice. The woman’s purse was made out of expensive leather, and it was on top of a fur coat.”

“So Stuart was right.”

“Yeah, he was. I could have made a career out of breaking into houses if I had wanted to. I was thinking that now that I’m old and look like I come from money, I could have an entire second career of crime.”

“Same holds true for me,” she says. “People trust women more than men, but the thing about crime is that you don’t make all that much money doing it.”

“Second careers aren’t about money really. They’re about new experiences.” He’s joking. Of course he is, but there’s something to what he’s saying. “So what was your one big indiscretion?”

She laughs and waves a hand at him and blushes, and he’s sure she’s not going to answer, but she says, “God, I slept with a married man.”

“Yeah?”

“I was nineteen, and he was a minister, and there was something really sexy about that.”

“Were you married?”

She shakes her head. “No. I never thought about the other woman.” She’s been smiling this whole time, but it weakens now, wavers. “Oh, God, I’ve been thinking about her lately.” She shakes her head and laughs a little to herself.

“And you’ve followed the rules ever since?”

“Sure,” she says. “I never break the rules anymore.”

“But you wish you had.”

She shrugs. “No. I wish everyone had. I wish that the world were full of rule followers, but that’s just not who we are. So I guess I might as well just break all the damn rules.”

“Do you want to get back at him a little maybe? Maybe with me?” Dale knows there must be a him, knows what this him must have done. Still, he can’t believe that he’s saying this, Dale Worth, retired civil engineer, coming up with lines like this.

She must be surprised too because she looks at him in a way that women haven’t in a long time. He must be exuding confidence. Maybe she has a bad boy thing. He hasn’t been a bad boy since the day he broke into that house, and come to think of it, he got laid in Vegas that weekend a couple of times.

Whatever the reason, when she leads Dale back to the bathroom, it doesn’t feel as if it’s about him, but what does that matter? It’s not about her either. It’s about that terrible breakfast commemorating the last forty-one years. It’s about what he might have been doing that whole time, what he’s missed out on in his windowless office.

They have sex on the edge of a bathroom counter quickly, roughly, ending before anyone else comes to the open house. When they’re done, they laugh together, not really because anything is funny. They just laugh. Her skirt is off but her blazer and blouse are still on, and that’s funny to him now that he notices it. He laughs once more.

The bathroom seems to be a world to itself where the rest of society doesn’t exist and rules don’t apply. Inside, they are friendly partners, and she keeps her palm resting on his chest. When they leave, she turns into the aloof saleswoman, which is almost certainly the mask she wears for the world.

“So,” she says, straightening her skirt, “I don’t suppose there’s any chance that you’re actually interested in buying a house in Claremont?”

“No.” He shakes his head.

“Well then. Maybe in the future.” She offers him a card that he takes and reads. Her name is Shirley.

This is the problem with crime, dangerous sex, theft, or whatever. The profits are never good unless someone really knows what he’s doing. Dale tosses the card on the front stoop as soon as he closes the door, and he thinks about Stuart. At some point thirty-five years ago or so, they lost touch. By then, Stuart was an accountant who had moved to downtown Los Angeles. He wonders what happened to him in the riots of 1992. He wonders if life has gotten any easier for him, and if he has a family, and if he is rich.

Maybe he’ll call him when he has time. Maybe he’ll look up Shirley too. Probably not. His wife is waiting for him with a little retirement party with his family. The kids. The grandkids.

For now, he has to get home.

John Brantingham is the author of seven books of poetry and fiction and is the editor of the LA Fiction Anthology. His work has appeared in publications such as The Best Small Fictions, Writer’s Almanac, and The Journal. He teaches composition and creative writing at Mt. San Antonio College and in a program that is free to the public in Sequoia and Kings Canyon.

Volume VI – Issue 1 – Artist’s Bios

Christine (Curry) Coates grew up in Redlands, CA, drawing, painting, rollerskating, and exploring the mountains, hills, and deserts surrounding her town. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Otis College of Art & Design and currently resides in Redlands again, where she continues to paint, explore, and sometimes rollerskate.

Graphic artist and painter Allen Forrest was born in Canada and bred in the US. He has created cover art and illustrations for literary publications and books. He is the winner of the Leslie Jacoby Honor for Art at San Jose State University’s Reed Magazine and his Bel Red painting series is part of the Bellevue College Foundation’s permanent art collection. Forrest’s expressive drawing and painting style is a mix of avant-garde expressionism and post-Impressionist elements reminiscent of van Gogh, creating emotion on canvas.

Jeff Mays currently lives in Redlands and has just finished a project called Assembled Pipe Portraiture wherein he took the portraits of many assembled pipes he found in public places throughout the Inland Empire. You can view the entire gallery at diamondmays.wix.com/jlmphotog.

Dr. Ernest Williamson III has published poetry and visual art in over 500 national and international online and print journals. Professor Williamson has published poetry in journals such as The Oklahoma Review, Review Americana:A Creative Writing Journal, and The Copperfield Review. Some of his visual artwork has appeared in journals such as The Columbia Review, The GW Review, and Fiction Fix. Many of his works have been published in journals representing over 50 colleges and universities around the world. Dr. Williamson is an Assistant Professor of English at Allen University, self-taught pianist, editor, poet, singer, composer, social scientist, private tutor, and a self-taught painter. His poetry has been nominated three times for the Best of the Net Anthology. He holds a B.A. and an M.A. in English/Creative Writing/Literature from the University of Memphis and a PhD in Higher Education Leadership from Seton Hall University.

INLANDIA LITERARY JOURNEYS: Remembering ‘A Room of Her Own’

o6x6km-b88706664z.120160509101238000gp7gdvvv.10 The book was going to be an easy undertaking: two months to revise, update and reformat a work I published in 1995 about “A Room of Her Own,” essentially a bookstore within The Frugal Frigate, a Children’s Bookstore in Redlands.

Instead, my undertaking launched a new adventure.

In July 1987, I lived only a mile from The Frugal Frigate in the restored historic district of Redlands, when educator and businesswoman Katherine Thomerson opened its doors. Soon, Katherine enticed Ann Schmidt to assist her.

Nestled to the right of the front entrance, Katherine maintained a steady presence of four shelves of books by, about and for women. “The Women’s Corner,” as it became known, met a deep and growing need in the community.

By January 1991, a separate space was created within the store for books by, about and for women. It was called “A Room of Her Own.” Ann was the primary keeper of the room.

Within four years, it evolved into the largest collection of books by, for and about women north of San Diego, east of Los Angeles and south of the San Francisco Bay Area. It became a center of intellectual, literary and creative activity for women in the Inland Empire.

In early 1995, Katherine gave me permission to conduct an ethnographic, or descriptive, study on the evolution of “A Room of Her Own” as part of my doctoral work. I tracked its growth and activities from March 1991 to August 1995, and included a photo essay.

It became clear that the room was a magical place.

There were thousands of books, mostly single copies, in 49 topically defined sections. Ann introduced readers to more than 124 books in her column in the monthly newsletter. The Monthly Book Group devoured and discussed 51 books, and a Spiritual Journey Group provided women a safe space for dialogue.

Finally, numerous scholars and authors including Susan Straight, Laura Kalpakian, and Patricia McFall gave presentations for 56 events in the outstanding Speaker/Discussion Series, held monthly, on the stage of The Frugal Frigate, free to the public.

I was a reader for three celebrations in the series, and my one-woman play, “Mother of the Mystic Garden: The Life and Times of Hildegard von Bingen,” debuted at one those events. In 1996, I also organized and presented “A Celebration of Sacred Songstorysound.”

In 1995, when Larry Burgess, then the director of the A.K. Smiley Public Library in Redlands, requested a copy of my study for inclusion in the library’s Local History Archives, I had only a partial understanding of how appropriate that decision was.

Ten years later, after 16 years of service, The Frugal Frigate, housing “A Room of Her Own” within, was sold. The 2,200-square-foot “A Room of Her Own” was dismantled.

In 2009, The Frugal Frigate sold again. The current owner, Gay Kolodzik, purchased the store in 2010.

Last spring, I decided to republish the study as a book accessible to a much larger audience. The story of “A Room of her Own” chronicles a unique, vital piece of women’s history in Redlands and California, on many fronts. It provided an exciting, vibrant literary scene, was a woman-owned business, supported the visual arts, scholarship, debate, education, self-discovery and community, to name a few.

I contacted Katherine Thomerson and Ann Schmidt, re-interviewed them, and received their blessing to revive the study. Ann was invaluable providing both archival and updated information. Amazingly, I learned, the Book Group has been meeting continuously since April 1991.

As word about the project spread, people voiced interest in contributing to it. A chapter on recollections was birthed.

I put forth queries, conducted interviews, and contributors generously submitted reflections. Artist Christine Curry Coates writes of how the murals Katherine commissioned to grace “A Room of Her Own,” launched her successful career as an artist. Laura Kalpakian, Gayle Brandeis and many others penned their memories.

It has been a time of community: of rekindling and reconnecting, laughter and tears.

The anticipated two months to publication has turned into a year of unfolding processes now nearing completion. I’m grateful for, and humbled by, the results. The project took on its own energy, once again sweeping me away on a frigate to A Room of Her Own, providing gifts far beyond what I ever imagined.

Inland author Joan Koerper has published everything from poetry to scholarly research. She earned her Ph.D. in Writing and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco.

INLANDIA LITERARY JOURNEYS: Neglected titles have volume of life

o6x6fj-b88698409z.120160509100902000gn0g7dlp.10 Gardening and reading are often pictured together as delights practiced into the afterlife, probably because people can’t imagine ever giving them up.

While everyone knows that gardeners have to weed their plots to get rid of plants that would choke out the beauty of the whole, book lovers rarely consider that good libraries must be weeded as well if they hope to avoid the fate of becoming frozen in time – dusty, unused and overseen by a Miss Havisham of a librarian.

The removal of books – seen as artifacts – has often caused much drama for small local and school libraries that attempt to stay current.

As a school librarian working on a campus that several years ago celebrated its centennial, I am one of a long series of teacher librarians who have never had the time to properly cull the collection. So much remains on the shelves that should have left the building decades ago; these books become time capsules, and the weeding is a romp through pop history and culture.

It’s difficult not to have deep affection for outdated books in the same way one might for a ride that is torn out of Disneyland because its time has passed.

As a form of amusement, the book itself, the information it contains, or its author, might have been a part of our childhood or, in a library as old as mine, our parents’ or grandparents’ childhoods.

I recently promised myself to remove the library’s never-used books from the shelves. Some were easy to pull, such as the science books that stated that one day people would land on the moon.

With others, I fought an undercurrent of affection, the source of which was puzzling. The checkout history of “A First Electrical Book for Boys,” published in 1936, was lost; however, the book was never added to the circulation system when it was automated in the late 1980s.

I imagine innocent, inquisitive kids pouring over it. I like to picture smart, sneaky girls taking the book home with the compliance of their librarian.

“The Story of X-ray” from General Electric is a pamphlet that appears to have been printed in 1949 and was checked out nine times from 1951 to 1959. It pictures a technician without any protective garments taking X-rays in a hospital room with a mobile unit. X-ray technology itself is described as something of a creepy Big Brother: “There is practically no region of the body that is not subject to its searching eye.”

Shelved nearby, “The Walt Disney Story of Our Friend the Atom,” published in 1956 and acquired in 1958, enjoyed numerous checkouts ending in 1981. Despite being fabulously dated, it does appear to be a friendly book, with its full-color illustrations and cartoon images.

I move to find books that are either “head scratchers“ or “heartbreakers.”

“Cheese Varieties and Descriptions” from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (Agricultural handbook No. 54), first issued in 1953 and costing $1.75, was never checked out. Even back in the day, it seems teens were focused on something other than their future wine-and-cheese parties.

More curious yet is “How to Know the Eastern Land Snails: Pictured-keys for determining the land snails of the United States occurring east of the Rocky Mountain Divide.” Published in 1962 and acquired in 1967, it was checked out once, in 1970. That’s once more than I would have put money on.

The “heartbreakers” include “National Geographic’s Song and Garden Birds of North America.” This volume is beyond beautiful, its heavy glossy sheets thick with full-color images of every imaginable bird. It’s an early interactive book, complete with a booklet of bird songs on several flimsy 45-rpm vinyl records.

INLANDIA LITERARY JOURNEYS: Persuasion and pitfalls in political poems

o5n5zl-b88689179z.120160414135006000gt9g06if.10 This is the year it could happen. Maybe you’re stuck in a stop-and-go rubberneck on the 91 freeway, the radio a dull drone through your morning migraine as the partisan station of your choice recaps the political news of the day.

Maybe it’s already happened. Maybe you’ve already begun thinking of words that rhyme with candidate names.

Wherever it happens, you might have the sudden urge to write a political poem sometime during the next eight months. To help you get ready, I’ve prepared this simple guide to help you handle the situation with aplomb.

First of all: Don’t panic. Pull to the side of the road somewhere safe, or wait for the nearest exit, then find an empty parking lot or an exceptionally long drive-through line. Poems sometimes write themselves, but they can’t write themselves while you’re driving. Only poem in park.

Don’t feel guilty. A poem is just a special way to talk about special things. We all have an innate desire to say the un-sayable, to articulate all that lies just beyond the reach of articulation. Poetry can happen to anyone, anywhere, so remember: It’s not your fault.

Find a recording device. Use your smartphone, if you have one, to record your poem as a voice memo, text it to a friend, email it to yourself, or tap it out using a standard writing application.

If not, many of the world’s greatest poems have been written on ancient, crusty glovebox napkins. It’s true. If all else fails, there’s still memorization, a pneumonic device, which historically has been the point of poetry more often than not. Whatever tool you use, just don’t lose it.

Now that you have your poem saved, the real trouble begins. Sure, you’ve written something “felt in the blood and felt along the heart,” as Wordsworth put it, but what next? Does your political poem have any cultural value? Should you share it with close friends, or perhaps even the public?

On this question, poets themselves have long been split. In “A Defense of Poetry,” Percy Shelley famously wrote that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” and others have been trying to pat themselves on the back equally firmly ever since.

William Carlos Williams says, “It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.” Your political poem could be a matter of life and death! More recently, Meena Alexander writes that, “We have poetry/ So we do not die of history,” a statement I particularly love.

Not everyone agrees, though. In a 1965 lecture to students at Berkeley, Jack Spicer said, “I don’t know of any political poems which have worked,” and suggested instead of writing poems that they write letters to their congressmen. Both would be equally effective, he reasoned.

I once asked National Book Award winner Troy Jollimore why he finds political poems difficult to write, and he worried about preaching to the converted: “The people who know those are good values are already on my side; the people that don’t think they’re good values aren’t going to be convinced by my siding up with good values.”

He has a point, too. A poem isn’t an argument. A poem’s purpose isn’t to persuade — persuasion is for op-eds and campaign ads.

So keeping that in mind, re-read your political poem. Is it cheerleading, or is it trail-blazing? Does it reach deeper into the abyss to haul up some new creature?

Just last week, an Orange County poet named David Miller wrote in a political poem, an elegy for the personified American Dream: “I ran when I heard you crying/ like a phone, no one told me how alone you are.” Now that’s what Shelley meant when he said that poetry “purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being.”

Be honest, does your political poem really purge the film of familiarity, or is it just more mosquito guts on the windshield? If it’s the former, then by all means share it widely! This is the year for purging.

Wrightwood author Timothy Green is editor of Rattle magazine