books

from a used bookstore in Eau Claire:

san francisco mime troupe: the first ten years
footlights on the prairie: repertory theatre in the rural united states, 1900-1950

i want to go back for:
my life in the russian theatre
a history of the federal theatre project
an early biography of bert williams

apparently, someone had collected all of these relatively rare theatre books as they were being discarded (discarded!) from state universities. somehow, they ended up at this bookstore. and then i ended up there, looking for something completely different. there were many others, too many to list and too many to take home in my suitcase.

discarded
i only read books
that have already been read
no strangers to
hands and eyes
bent pages
and scribbled margin notes
sideways and upside down
we are all
discarded books
shelves and shelves within us
dirty thumbs and broken spines
organized in our own ways
subjects printed by hand
on white slips of paper
stuck between
vonnegut
and
alexie
to seperate
stories
from
poetry

but you still have to look
because the book
that you need
that you've been needing
for all of your life
is already there-
not under the right subject
and not legible
and sometimes not in english
between
a volume of the bronte sisters
and a misplaced collection
of r. crumb
a bedroom of pages
like skin
inked with letters
spilling the secrets of
the ground beneath our feet.