At the Last Bookstore

At the last bookstore, Anne Frank still smiles
on the shelf,
marked down to sell.

No one is buying tonight.

Down
the
road

beyond the miles
of cinder block walls
hiding
suburban backyards
the bricks
the color of old bandaids

comes the bright tumble
of perennial California citrus
oranges, lemons, grapefruit
swollen on the branch
and smashed
on the sidewalk

a careless harvest

down that road

past the fruit no one is hungry enough to pick
to eat

someone
keeps spraypainting
a swastika
on the county-owned storage trailer
as big as a railroad car
parked forever
on the …

Book Castle

Nothing Like Musty Serendipity

My eyes still grow wide each time I step into Book Castle’s Movie World, and I can’t help but grin at its reliable smell of old books. This place feels …