I Don't Read

I Don’t Read

By Justin X. M. Corriss

What a singularly limiting phrase.

What a mark of arrogance and misplaced sense of self-importance

That should have you declare with pride the kinds of things that you

Don’t read.

When there are people out there who understand the gift that it is to read anything at all,

We’ve developed a glut of printed words and pictures on paper.

Stories,

Poems,

Journals,

Blogs,

And news tickers.

You can stand before me and declare

With a smile of misplaced superiority

That there are things you

Don’t read.

But I don’t care what it is that you

Don’t read.

Romance.

Fiction.

Nonfiction.

Science Fiction.

Science.

Histories.

Biographies. 

Math textbooks.

None of these, it may be said, will bring as much pleasure as another.

Feel free to tell me the things that you don’t like to read.

But only that you know you don’t because you’ve

Read them.

I don’t know who feels that warmth shared between a favorite novel and its reader

And a man at the DMV with alphanumeric form CVO126.

But even he, frustrated as he is,

Pen poised for perfect strokes,

Lest that form become two more to correct the errors he makes

Because he misread

Reads it.