Stevie Ronnie

The Book Store

This is where books come to die in fruit boxes –
piano scales. Bequests are laid to rest on shelf Z
where the spine of American Railway Times, 1829,
lives at the end of the line by an unmarked folio.
Rows and rows of the TLS, boxes of indexes,
handlists to check on cat.  Here we find the Divine
Comedy next to Elements of Insurance, shelving
racks with wheels, chairs that don’t match,
low ceilings, trunked cables, German overflow,
and a switch marked summer, winter.
The librarian follows a thread of memory to the box.
Don’t call, please, leave me here beneath the issue desk.

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