At a dinner table packed with writers and book people at the 2024 Western Carolina University Spring Literary Festival, held in April in Cullowhee, North Carolina, the cofounder of Gold Leaf Literary, Lauren Harr, told me that what she finds most interesting about a poetry collection is what has been left out of it. The maybe-poems, she meant. The almosts. The poems dropped on the floor early in the editing process, even before the manuscript is sent to contests and open reading periods. The pieces yanked out at the last minute, right before the collection begins production at its press. I understood exactly what Harr was talking about: the poems that haunt a book from the outside. {read}