One of the things that makes the interminable wait at the 14th St. post office package pick-up window more tolerable (besides running into John Godfrey, who also has a PO box there) is that I will often have a poem-card from Buck Downs in hand, just pulled from inside the little glass door. These one-poem cards just started appearing a few years ago.

I've always been fascinated by the movements of people and machines you can see and hear behind the honey-combed walls of PO boxes -- as though these things existed in some other dimension beyond the barriers of communication. From this realm I pull:

"those looney sexy FBI
misfits on TV got
carried away again

I am having an Actualist moment!

talking about television
talking to the television"

I realized that I’ve read much of Downs' poetry exclusively in this post office. There's something about the tortorous slowness and tense administrative vibe there that, in some ways, makes it the perfect place to read these short, relaxed, and amusing poems. You might say Downs has been blogging for years though the US Postal Service.