Bookstore fantasy
"Do you have poetry," asks the sunburnt man
in white shorts. "Rumi or Sappho? Burns
or Keats or Yeats?" "Why yes upstairs," I say.
He shakes his thighs, tight from cycling. "And classics?
Chaucer, Dante, Flaubert, Proust, James Joyce?"
"Yes," I say, "Yes I do, yes, all
the classics." Gold wires sprout at his neck.
"Some of my favourites," he adds, "are less well-known.
Li Po? James Hogg? Appuleius?" I fan
myself with paper. "The Golden Ass," I say.
"Oh! Might you have a Golden Ass?" he asks.
Blinding sunlight streams on the counter between us:
blank sheets of flame white from the sun.
He mounts the stairs to poetry. I pick up my pen.