Ours are loved and underlined,
with notes of questioning,
little hearts next to phrases
worded particularly nicely,
and expletives next to
postmodern jarble,
particularly popular
in my edition of Underworld.
Disbelief splatters
the faces of those
who see their teacher’s aide,
who helped them digest
King Lear all those months ago,
shove handfuls of tattered
texts across the table
in exchange for pennies.
As I scoop up my pocket change
and pick up my empty cloth bag,
relieved to be free of all the
magical realism Latin America had to offer,
(except, of course, Marquez
and his dirty parody Allende),
I consider all the possibilities
my new riches could buy me.
I could get that new collection of
Collins that everyone is shocked
I still don't own.
Perhaps one of Coelho’s lesser works
would make a nice summer read.
There’s always the Silmarillion,
Atlas Shrugged,
Gravity’s Rainbow,
The Help,
Finnegan’s Wake…
a list of a lifetime’s reads.
But I will put my handful of nickels and dimes
in the jar, sitting on my desk,
the tall, blue one I made in ceramics class.
Its contents are not for novels but for us,
and bring us one step closer
to that pronoun we can’t yet claim.
us and our and we, not you and me.
simple words worth more than
The Conquest of New Spain or Popul Vuh
could ever offer.
So for now my library remains selective,
I could never part with The Critical Works of Jonathan Swift,
not even for you,
but Equino is out the door, along with
my second copy of Burke,
who I would gladly discard for
a tank of gas
to get a couple hundred miles closer
to Albuquerque.
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