Robert H. Sarkissian: Booktellers

Books on shelves, on reserve, those that sell
hard and soft, spines and covers
diagnoses in chapters, science or characters
they sit and smell like musty cellars
worlds inside unto themselves
carried and borrowed, traveling onward
coming full circle and tumbling downward
beautiful pages of pulpous delight
yellowing corners, but lovely, and only
if I could understand or maybe remember
that which I read last year in September
I’d eat all the paper my stomach could hold
digesting the letters, and numbers, in bold
and cough up the words I love to recite
the words that deserve to be told I would tell