One garden, and one hippopotamus
A prose and poetry memoir of thirty years in a cemetery in Queens, and a chapbook of poems written to get through a hard season.
My Cemetery Friends
A garden of encounters at Mount Saint Mary in Queens, New York
Vincent has been walking the grounds of Mount Saint Mary for more than thirty years. His mother and his aunt are buried there. So are firefighters, Marines, neighbours, and a great many people whose names have already gone quiet.
These are the stories he carries back. A former fireman who walks grave to grave with his bagpipes, playing a different melody for each person he is remembering. A headstone with three dates on it that sends him looking for the family behind the name. Ordinary afternoons in a place most people drive past without slowing down.
The book holds poems and photographs alongside the prose, and it asks the reader to take the walk rather than read about it.
"My Cemetery Friends is a celebration of life. It is six degrees of separation, how one can meet someone, and in turn, this can lead to other unique encounters."
Also in French: Mes Amis du Cimetière (Kindle ebook)
The Usefulness of Hippopotamus
A humorous chapbook for trying times
One blank page, one memory of Fantasia, one dancing hippopotamus, and a chapbook was born.
Vincent wrote these poems during the pandemic, while he was also being treated for bladder cancer. He made an early decision about what that season would be. He would not sit in the dark. He went looking for whatever was still funny and found it in hippopotami.
The poems are short and light on their feet, and they are serious about exactly one thing: that there is still something worth laughing at.
"Humour is medicine. During rough times, humor will help lighten and lessen physical and mental anxiety."
Also in French: L'utilité de l'hippopotame (Kindle ebook)
Take the walk yourself
Start with the garden. My Cemetery Friends is in paperback now, and the hippopotamus poems are a short, funny follow-up for anyone who needs one.
$7.11 · paperback · 80 pages · 50 ratings at 4.7 stars
Buy on AmazonISBN-13 978-1778833526 · Bookside Press · May 13, 2024