Library

I don’t know what I’d do—

The burn in my thighs from too many stairs
Banana espionage and a wood grain that sands
My ears, befuddled mind-trumpets,
When fluorescents become prisms
Become more familiar than the sun,

When all these shelves shelf me
Into filing cabinet sections that will never
Even skim the lates and the greats;

The heat slows my pen and fogs grey,
Shimmering and solid between my paper
And the words I haven’t snatched yet,
Tugging my attention to the infinite piping
That sheaths a certain wired electricity
I wish my ink would conduct—

Formica permits no love to splash
Purple and unbidden like kool-aid
Onto its has-been television snow horizontals,
Will only sip history’s solace
With iced mint leaves drained of their curtseys
And flirtation, like metal bookends.