Project Bookshelf: From the Bookshelves of Beth Couture

My bookshelves are a catch all for all the trinkets and strange things I find, and have become altars of sorts (to what I don’t exactly know). Some of the things are gifts (some of the stones, for example, which I collect; the matryoshka, which a student brought me from Russia; the red rooster, which was my grandmother’s; the glass hedgehog from my mom; the art work, which is the result of craft nights with friends), some I bought myself (the Barbie doll, which I have named “Asylum Barbie” because she looks a little crazy with her butchered hair and weird lacy shift; the collection of petrified squid I bought online; the jack in the box clown I bought at a thrift store because it terrified me), and some things I just find.

I have a bug collection (mostly cicadas, though also a butterfly and a couple of honey bees), owl feathers, rocks, and post cards. Part of me feels like I should move everything so I can actually see my books, but the rest of me can’t imagine another place for all of it. And it fits, really, or at least I tell myself it does. One day I want my entire apartment to look like a museum of oddities.

I can’t go anywhere without picking up books, so my collection is pretty eclectic and is completely disorganized. I don’t have enough space on my shelves for all of them anymore, so I just stack wherever there’s room. There’s a stack I’ve begun on the floor which makes me pretty nervous.

Beth Couture’s work can be found in a number of journals and anthologies, including Gargoyle, Drunken Boat, The Southeast Review, Ragazine, and Thirty Under Thirty from Starcherone Books. She teaches composition at Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, PA.