A Book of Matches

will not be catalogued or found by
Library of Congress classification.
Although a kind of paperback— good for
a little light reading— it probably

will be overlooked for Oprah’s book club
and the Times bestseller list. Could it have
a story to tell? Ephemera of
consumer culture, hardly worth noticing

until a man lights a woman’s cigarette
with it, writes a phone number on it,
puts it in a pocket. Then it becomes
part of a story, a detail remembered

about a certain time, a certain place.
Whoever opens this book expects
a brilliant beginning, a consuming
plot, and a tossed-off ending: a man may

be sitting at a bar, staring for a long
time at a matchbook next to his glass before
absent-mindedly picking it up. Here
the author perhaps tells us the matchbook

becomes a door, the way everyday objects
open up and allow us to wander
deep within ourselves. Anyone else sees
the cover with some advertisement,

which he untucks and retucks behind the sand
striking bar: did anyone actually
go back to the “World’s Most Romantic
Restaurant—Shangri-La” in Sisseton,

South Dakota, “Learn Basic Computer
Programming at Home” and become one of
the “Experienced Men Earning $7-12K
Per Year”, or see “Bill and Fay” at “Southside

Pool Hall” in Caldere, Kansas, “You’ll Like Their
Beer”? Opening the cover, he finds stapled
inside two rows of ten matches—dipped red
phosphorous heads, cardboard tinders and

handles—that can be torn out of the book
to strike, followed by the familiar scratch
and sizzle in the dark, the comforting
small glow inside a cupped hand. Twenty

little tales to tell, he imagines, each
one beginning a story: one to light
a joint an old high school buddy offers
him, one to illuminate a forking

path on a moonless mountain, another
to light a candle beside a bed where
his lover has waited for him.
Not the light of a firefly, a star,

the eye of a cat, but the spark of
something just as brilliant, something
that makes him feel there is
no match like love.