Theater of Memory, New and Selected Poems of Mark Perlberg will be published posthumously by Louisiana State University Press in the fall of 2012. The book will include poems written toward the end of his life in 2008, as well as selections from his earlier books.

Three previously unpublished poems from Theater of Memory will appear in the Spring issue of Prairie Schooner, published by the University of Nebraska.

This month's poem from Theater of Memory

The Old Man In The Green House

His house at the edge of the road is tumbledown,
its siding weathered to a noxious shade of green.
The upper windows, stuffed with stained towels,
clatter in a stiff breeze.
Paper plates cover cracks in the glass.

Summer mornings he sits outside in a nine dollar
plastic chair.  Even in August heat he wears a sweater.
Such meals as he has he cooks on an old wood stove,
lifting round iron lids to drop the wood inside.

The town has tried to move him to a trim apartment
one of a small string built for elders.
He won’t hear of it.
The social worker has stopped arguing with him.
“He’ll starve to death in there,” she says,
“if  he doesn’t burn up in a kitchen fire first.”
But most islanders will push just so far.
Then they wonder who is helping whom.