Wandering Around Mankato

Yesterday Will and I drove an hour and fifteen minuets to Mankato, partly because we had never been there, and partly because we found a review of a great used bookstore on Front Street, which turned out to be closed. We did find a couple of strange gems on our trek, though.

For one, we drove by a weird "flea market" in Waseca:


If you're looking for tattered copies of Baby-Sitters Club books (who's not?), porcelain cats, porcelain boots, porcelain tigers, packages of Depends Fitted Underwear, or pieces of dilapidated sewing machines, this place is your jam.

Sidebar: just waiting for Will to chastise me for using the word "jam" and not meaning something spreadable and, preferably, raspberry, that you can put on toasted bread products.

Aside from that, wandered around looking for (closed) bookstore, found my building...


...(don't know why I'm making that particular face), then withdrew from the dead college part of town to eat sushi and to find this little gem tucked away in the laughably small poetry section of Mankato's Barnes & Noble:



Now we're Memorializing stuff, this Monday, day of no school. There was a tiny two-or three-minute parade rambling down our street earlier today: a few nice cars, two floats, some marching guys in fatigues, and six drummers from Albert Lea High School. Happy Memorial Day!

Thanks also to Memorial Day for providing two acceptances in my inbox this morning! I'll have two poems coming out in Neon Magazine sometime in the future (not sure about dates yet), and one poem up at Everyday Genius sometime, I think, next month.

Now back to celebrating Memorial Day the best way I know how: sitting around on the couch and complaining that I don't have anything to do. And, of course, preparing for these purported tornadoes.