The Reference Librarian of Arcane Griefs
Who knows when
she went down
to the evening dimness
of the stacks,
but now she stands
with her flabby back to us,
slowly turning the pages
of a long treatise
on melancholy
and quietly weeping.
Anyone would think
it was she herself
who misshelved
the books we needed.
What about the burning curtains?
I want to ask her.
And what
about the parking lot filled
with abandoned babies?
She doesn’t look up,
but if she did,
she might see planes
like silver crucifixes
and a few tiny gray clouds
scattered like the debris
of some distant confusion.
Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University
of
New York at New Paltz, is the author of 10 poetry
chapbooks, including Visiting the Dead (2009) from Flutter
Press
and Still Life With Firearms (2009) from Right Hand
Pointing. His first full-length collection of poetry,
Lovesick,
has just been published by Press Americana. For
more information, visit
http://www.americanpopularculture.com/press_americana.htm
