From the Desk of … Ernest Hilbert

A few unusual objects appear on my writing desk. Aside from the customary dog-eared volumes, pens, and computer, one encounters a microphone and pop filter, for recording poems. One further glimpses a nineteenth-century harpoon, brass knuckles, dagger (broadsword out of frame) and, largely concealed behind books, a grenade. I stopped in a small town to visit a bookstore that turned out to be closed, though the Army-Navy store next door was open. The grenade is a simple reminder that sometimes one needs to lob a grenade into a poem to get a reader’s attention. – Ernest Hilbert