by Phill Provance (28 pp. Saddle-Stitched. B&w illus. by Christopher Schmidt) $7 ppd.
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In his debut collection, Andalucian dog Phill Provance weds humor and pathos. The speaker of The Day the Sun Rolled Out of the Sky is not so much an anti-hero as a secret identity viewed with precision and candor. Provance makes the quotidian magical employing only the most mundane of objects; no false bottom in his top hat and his rabbit speaks in tongues.
WHERE I DRAW THE LINE
by Phill Provance
When the last one left
a knife lay
on the kitchen table
for three days.
It was an eight-inch
chef’s knife
she’d been slicing
a Christmas orange with.
Now, I’m normally a tidy man,
but you see,
she left the day the sun
rolled out of the sky
demanding to know
who had stolen his shoes.
He beamed darkly
at the chief of police and refused
to leave the place
where the World War II
monument
had stood. So it was
three days of trying to spray
him out with fire hoses
while the children bathed
and roasted marshmallows
from the roof of Town Hall. Then,
on the third day,
the moon alighted
and admitted
to stealing the sun’s shoes.
So I went home
to find the knife
and a seed fused to
the caramelized juice.
And I decided, right then and there,
that I’d never let
another woman
cut a Christmas orange.
by Phill Provance
When the last one left
a knife lay
on the kitchen table
for three days.
It was an eight-inch
chef’s knife
she’d been slicing
a Christmas orange with.
Now, I’m normally a tidy man,
but you see,
she left the day the sun
rolled out of the sky
demanding to know
who had stolen his shoes.
He beamed darkly
at the chief of police and refused
to leave the place
where the World War II
monument
had stood. So it was
three days of trying to spray
him out with fire hoses
while the children bathed
and roasted marshmallows
from the roof of Town Hall. Then,
on the third day,
the moon alighted
and admitted
to stealing the sun’s shoes.
So I went home
to find the knife
and a seed fused to
the caramelized juice.
And I decided, right then and there,
that I’d never let
another woman
cut a Christmas orange.
