A New Poem: ‘The Vacant Bookshop’s Haunting’

Note: this poem was first published on 1 February 2024, on my Substack newsletter, The Traveller’s Literary Supplicant.

 

The Vacant Bookshop’s Haunting

By Christopher Deliso

 

Felled, all felled,

but neither worse for wear

nor place for verse;

like that beach—anyway, it was

too popular, by half

with vacancy of McKinsey staff

and no one road shall comfort me

where winter-lent chapbooks sung old Beat jazz.

Do you recall when they chopped it down,

to the generic and to size? When all scrolled

down—but that little jug of yellow and brown

transmutes wise with years, becomes

a volume parched itself

ever unlent, unloved, unsold

and that notion, more precious—imagine, still:

for just two-fifty, you’d be stumped

felled, all—by the broad

corpus of Callimachus.