The Late Phoenix Bookstore

The Late Phoenix Bookstore
Cornelia Street
Greenwich Village
New York NY


The smell
of new books, ink, paper, sweat, blood, dust, love, lust
hits, smacks, slaps, thumps, snaps,
you
at the door.
Rows of shelves and
shelves of rows
of thin little books with spines of
red and blue and green and yellow
and all the colors splashing together
like at rainbows end.
Each full of words
coaxed, cajoled, enticed, coerced, bullied, pulled, torn, jerked, ripped
from the mother lexica.
Then
placed, scribed, printed, jotted, scribbled,
etched, scrawled, scratched, gouged
in the blood writing
of a myriad poet hands.
Inside soft chair lounging
and floor sitting
in the corners
the poet ghost presence lives.