LPiA-23 Nov. 3

[rayheinrich]

There's a newer version with a photograph here.


                    < The Epistles of Stanhope St. >
                       
                        a warehouse in Brooklin
                        a crowded dirty place
                       
                        a catacomb of unkempt jewels
                        riches for a dollar
                       
                        be careful
                       
                        it's so easy to get out of hand
                       
                        and on the second floor
                        the shelves loom over me
                        a rat
                        seeking comfort in their narrow aisles
                       
                        the books of dead parents
                        thrown into boxes
                        by sons and daughters
                        old lives that wouldn't fit
                       
                        old lives are welcome here
                       
                        the quiet of the vault
                        the smell of the books
                        yearning to be opened
                        yearning to reveal themselves
                       
                        my prizes are the annotated ones
                        notes scribbled in their margins
                       
                        letters from the past
                        addressed to me
                       
                        their titles?
                        how little this matters
                       
                                    - - -



More about this bookstore:

It is/was an old warehouse where most of the books seem to come from evictions and apartments
that were deserted or where the residents died. A lot of the books were in boxes, probably the ones
they arrived in. People rummage through the boxes, they get torn, and the books spill out on the floor.
The roof above one of the back corners has a small leak so the books below it are moldy and their
pages are stuck together. All the books were a dollar except for big ones with lots of photographs.
There're lots of chairs to sit in, randomly spread everywhere, probably from the same apartments
the books came from. The books are almost all in English, but most of the workers there can't
speak it. There's a small section of Spanish romance novels by the counter. But the people are ok,
friendly greetings every time I came in. The gods have decided it's my kind of bookstore.