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I'm in Love with the Morton Salt Girl/Echt & Ersatz

Paycock Press ISBN 0-9602424-8-1 $5

"I look forward to more of Peabody's work. He's fun to read, a quality not enough poets these days possess; and he produces zaps--often enough to let you know he's alive and you're alive. Some authentic verse runs from his pen, flows from his strong salt-box."
--Robert Peters

Peabody's first two books complete in one volume a/la the old Ace paperback Science Fiction series.

I'm in Love with the Morton Salt Girl

I'm in love with the Morton salt girl.
I want to pour salt in her hair and watch
her dance. I want to walk her through the
salt rain and pretend that it is water. I want to
get lost in the Washington Cathedral and follow her
salt trail to freedom.

I want to discover her salt lick in the forests of Virginia.
I want to stand in line for hours to see her walk on in
the middle of a movie only to have the film break and watch salt
pour out and flood the aisles. I want to sit in an empty theater
up to my eyeballs in salt and dream of her.

When I go home she will be waiting for me in her white dress
and I will drink salt water and lose my bad dreams.
I will seek the blindness of salt, salt down my wounds,
hang like a side of ham over the curtain rod in the bathroom
and let her pour salt directly on my body.

When she is done I will lick her salty lips with my tongue
and walk her down the stairs into the rain, wishing that I
could grow gills and bathe in her vast salt seas.

Attachments

There's a tangerine rotting on my desk.
I should probably throw it away,
but I've grown accustomed to the shape sitting there.
Besides, I like the way it smells.

"Most of Peabody's poems are wryly humorous. He's not a mean-spirited poet, even when attacking those he doesn't care for. In an age when the cruel lampoon has taken a firm hold, Peabody's compassion for human frailty is especially endearing."
--Kevin Bezner

". . . fresh, spritely, and enviably energetic . . . It all looks so effortless." -- Guy Davenport

" 'The poetry that's shot from guns' . . . Rick is best in homey, heart-felt descriptions that read like conversation." --Gail Saunders, Hard Crabs

"Discipline, craft, and wit make I'm in Love with the Morton Salt Girl one of the finest poetry chapbooks of the year." Eric Baizer, Literary Monitor

"The voice is impassioned, yet controlled . . . A nice collection for a first book." -- Robert Flanagan, Phoebe

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