Man in a Shroud, Girl with Dark Curls

Between several shelved volumes

Of Reader’s Digest Condensed,

Stood a peculiar hardback,

A collection of excerpts

Meant to entice young readers,

Or improve them, or stand in

Place of the originals—

One of those American

Attempts at repackaging

And recommodifying

Works in the Public Domain

As cultural capital.

One excerpt held the prison

And escape passages from

The Count of Monte Cristo,

And that was the whole story

As far as the child would know

Until years and years later.

Another excerpt featured

The first meeting of the boy,

John, with the girl, Lorna Doone.

And then those children parted

And never met up again,

Not to the reader’s knowledge,

Although he begged his mother

To buy him some Lorna Doones

When he saw them in a store

(Dry, bland, and disappointing),

And he pined for a decade

For the idea of that girl.

The book, like the shortbread, proved

Later of little interest,

But Lorna Doone haunted him.

Everything in those excerpts

Remained greater than the rest

Of wholes encountered later,

So it wasn’t surprising

To discover the cultists

Of fragments and bleached statues.