Photo by Kevin Butz
A Bookstore
Richard LeDue
Handcuffed by the cashier’s smile,
I answer, “I’m good,”
before the question is even asked,
which slices more like a paper cut
than a shank made from a spoon,
and the coffee shop
upstairs is out of business,
proving something about inflation
beyond my recently purchased
collected love poems of Pablo Neruda,
and there’re no chisels in cakes anymore,
perhaps because of the rising price
of flour or overzealous health inspectors,
who found god in a clipboard
and enough procedures to fill an ark,
leaving us to the luxury
of long lineups on a Sunday.
Richard LeDue
Handcuffed by the cashier’s smile,
I answer, “I’m good,”
before the question is even asked,
which slices more like a paper cut
than a shank made from a spoon,
and the coffee shop
upstairs is out of business,
proving something about inflation
beyond my recently purchased
collected love poems of Pablo Neruda,
and there’re no chisels in cakes anymore,
perhaps because of the rising price
of flour or overzealous health inspectors,
who found god in a clipboard
and enough procedures to fill an ark,
leaving us to the luxury
of long lineups on a Sunday.