Read an Excerpt from Noah Wareness' Real is the Word They Use to Contain Us

In a child's dream, a taximdermied rabbit argues with the gun that shot it. "You must never ask anyone if they are Real," the rabbit admonishes. 

Such is the surreal, dreamscape of a poetry collection that is Noah Wareness' Real is the Word They Use to Contain Us (Biblioasis). Made up of 26 deliciously weird poems by the mysteriously pseudonym'd author (Noah Wareness -- say it quickly), the collection is electric, just scary enough, and anchored in an expansive sense of loss, wonder, and awe. 

We're excited to present a brief excerpt from the wonderfully weird collection, exclusively available on Open Book.

Excerpt from Real is the Word They Use to Contain Us by Noah Wareness

...a few of the monsters crawling in the rug, though none of the very smallest, began to fold themselves down like the thumbprint patterns on the backs of creeping shells. They went to slink under the moulding and into the cracks between floorboards, hiding as far as they could from the parlour door, shadows around them vibrating like tiny springs...

The kitchen under the stairs 

there s rooms in your house you ve never been

you said empty bookshelves leaning sideways

drifts of white sawdust in their corners

there s cast iron pipe in the walls you said

dead pipes packed with old newspapers

matted together the colour of beach sand

i didn t even know i had a sister

or where the first dog ended up

and you told me when wasps get trapped

halfway in the grain of the floorboards

the sound of their wings makes a prism

i couldn t sleep i sat against your door

tracing its outline through the wallpaper

the piece of yellow glass you left me

the thread of light under the baseboard

as you stirred you turned on your lamp

i can reach up and touch their bodies now

they crumble like paper nests    grow back

brushing at the corners of my mouth

the wings hold me now there s footsteps

you re walking back and forth in the night

making tea the kitchen under the stairs

...but in the end most came to the Rabbit, a few at first and then multitudes, weaving themselves among the strands of his fur as it slipped in the breeze. The words he had spoken dressed him like a braided coat of shadow, a hundred monsters coiling over every inch of him; and it could not be told whether they meant to hide themselves or offer him protection, whatever the parlour door meant...

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Visit the Biblioasis website for more information on Real is the Word They Use to Contain Us