At the annual library book sale tempers run hot
and so does the room itself, deep in the basement,
aisles packed with fellow bargain hunters all 
shoving and shouldering each other like cattle
down a chute. Even the Poetry section is competitive—
one guy who looks to be a used book dealer
pulls volume after volume off the shelf without 
even opening them, filling a big cardboard box
at his feet and blocking my view every time I shift
to scan a shelf he hasn’t gotten to. Then he starts 
filling another box. We both put our hands at 
the same time on a selected Keats I don’t recognize,
and he doesn’t even bother with Excuse me as he
wrenches it out of my grip and moves on down
the row. A murderous rage rises in me such as
I haven’t felt since first grade, when Mrs. Kenton
slapped my wrong hand hard and swept all
my misspelled words off my desk to the floor.
I’ll never forget her toxic perfume as she leaned
over me to hiss her redundant disapproval, 
angry as a swan. She was indeed just like a swan—
tall, haughty, and vicious—and somehow in 
sixty years since I haven’t been able to forgive her.
It makes no sense. I’m a great speller. Love 
reading. And I didn’t even want the Keats.

How I used to relish wandering those broad glossy aisles
with Walt Whitman at my side! We were afoot
and lighthearted under a dozen fluorescent suns,
pondering options at leisure—no clerk to spot us,
glide over as in smaller, hipper stores, and ask
if they could help us. We didn’t want help! We liked
being faceless and democratic in the stadium-size store. 
Oh, we gazed long and long upon teeming shelves 
of cheap lampshades, lawn chairs, coffeemakers, 
dog food, rubber boots. We grinned at T shirts 
in hefty sizes, work shirts unsullied by designer tags.
Slowly we wheeled our wobbly cart past racks 
of off brand TVs, none of them plugged in
as at the upscale outlets, and we paused to glimpse 
our images reflected in each screen we passed, no rush, 
just American faces leaning and loafing at our ease, 
in vain the speeding or shyness as we starred in one 
TV program after another, our show brief as a sunbeam
glinting on a passing windshield.