The Book of Festus is a shattered fable. In these poems, every object has a voice; every thing is awake. Festus wakes inside a myth?on a wharf in Halifax, Nova Scotia?and recalls nothing but a bicycle. As he looks for it, he thinks the city?s thoughts. Upon a sidewalk over a buried river, he remembers what the city remembers. He steps past a skateboard park to a Mi’kmaq lagoon. He follows 17th century pioneer cattle to a fast food restaurant. A girl he once knew steps out of the fragments. Festus is an anagogic man, loser-hero of the first city, Ur, Halifax. This collection is a city?s lucid dream of itself.