a sestina
The most you can hope for is precious specificity.
In the reactive, referential, civil service business,
a post office atmosphere,
but then you’re in the same seat again,
and you’ll never save any particular moments this way.
Look up, darling, at the end of each row.
Sidle up close to the screen, the very first row,
if you want to come to terms with the specificity
of your every day desires, the way
you want and want and want and eat and sleep and feign business.
And wake up thrilled and dreading again,
overwhelmed by the pressure of the atmosphere.
Holding every color together, if you look too closely at the atmosphere,
it tumbles grayly like old columns. During our last silent row
I hid in the basement until the timer clicked and the lights went out again.
It is hard to strive for specificity
but that is exactly the point of books and business.
I thought hard on this and slid down the dusty cinderblocks in a leisurely way.
I am underground but there are teenagers grappling off that way,
I can hear them coo and fight in the pressured atmosphere.
It’s more of a group home than a viable place of business.
On the main floor, a truck clatters along each row,
holding only subject and class grouped specificly,
Repeating a winding loose-wheeled course again and again.
Flustered, I circle like a patron, lighting on the same section again
wondering why you act this way
and how I could be frustrated and happy about a tiny touch, such specificity,
such sharpness. The smell here varies according to the clientele, the atmosphere
holding motes of urine and perfume, but underlaid by dusty unread books, row after row,
which sometimes please me with their order, all business.
And sometimes they betray their aimlessness. A business
with no customers and no cost, run by hoarders whose favorites again
appear on every shelf, in every row.
At night I dream about the circles I make, the way
glimpses of you across the aisles charge the atmosphere.
Do I hope that I will always remember each time, specificly?
In the research business there is never one way
to get to the answer. Think again, consider the atmosphere.
Then start at the end of the row and move towards specificity.
I wrote this 5 years ago for a mcsweeney’s contest, just dug it up. It’s about my old job, when I worked in Brooklyn’s Central Library which has subbasements and tunnels and operates partially outside of time and space.
