Just Lookin’ for a Pool Hall, but the Proprietor’s Gone
by Travis Diehl
Ours the culture that calls
weeds unwanted things, here:
let me manipulate the scene.
Everything’s crooked.
We’ve got a bookstack now,
some manuals, & pictures.
The man knows his antiques,
but the partner’s gone
runs this end.
“I find comfort—
I find comfort in
my store”
of books,
we can assume he stutters.
We are here by incident.
Well we’re all in the store, so.
Comfort, please.
Not aisles but
wild rows. Some connection:
we find this poem & confirm
we exist. All the other books
are crooked, grammatical.
The bookie’s out for coffee—
we could steal how glorious
and run backpacks bookbags
backpacks all these others & it’s true
everything’s crooked. A fern
is crooked. A book LOVE is crooked.
“So you’re gonna read about
Minne-sota Fatss,” say
the beady-small bookseller.
No, I’m gonna—
I’m gonna shark my friends is what
I’m gonna do.
