The following is not a book review.
It is instead a wish to review a book known to exist,
albeit, with the grain of salt we take in assuming we can know anything.
Kinnon Batra is a British painter.
She depicts fictional sea creatures. Watercolors on canvas.
But before her work gained prominence online,
she published her first and only book: The Oblivion Cantos,
on Stygian Rim Press, in 2009.
The book is out of print. The publisher is long defunct.
There are no copies available on Amazon or AbeBooks.
It is only listed in a Polish webstore that sells jazz
called Drohobycz Market Records,
but my every attempt at buying the book results in
misplaced packages, black holes at customs checkpoints,
undecipherable response emails listing train departure times,
and deliveries to namesake individuals in research facilities
and communities yet untouched by access to the internet.
The book is composed of 99 poems named “Lacuna.”
These cantos are unnumbered, but only one is called “Andromeda.”
The book has no front or back cover. It is bound with a copper spiral
so that it is impossible to tell which page is the first or last.
The title page, publisher information, copyright date,
are all printed separately inside a small envelope labeled “Diegesis.”
My partner owns a copy, entirely by mistake.
She doesn’t care for poetry, but we share the same name.
All attempts at digitizing the book have failed
since the spiral gets in the way of scanners
and its glare outshines the typesetting in phone apps.
My only glimpses into the book are blurry pictures
and detached descriptions by my sleepless lover.
Our encounters are rare and short on time,
usually inside cargo ships by the marina,
and as much as I ask, the book always gets left behind
next to her pillow or the kitchen windowsill.
Whenever I try to visit, she is never home.