by Alison Henderson
The library had holes in it—
a steel rolling rack
carrying mostly fiction, donated.
Atwood, Hoover. Gone.
Covers torn off, pages missing.
Inmates write letters in block print
over the stories.
Flyleaves are the first to go.
But the bottom shelf—
hardcover and oversized:
Spanish-to-English dictionaries,
cookbooks, Aesop's fables.
Paperback murder mysteries
wedged at the end.
I slid a softcover from under
outdated textbooks, GED study guides,
federal statutes furred with dust.
Fore-edge scratched in blue and black:
P. Willis D45.
Patricia? Pauline?
I turned it over:
Claiming the Spirit Within.
I carried it out
in a manila folder
with my court documents.
I read from it
like scripture—
softcover curling at the corners.
My favorites circled in bright marker:
"I Go Back to May 1937,"
"The Necessity," "The Swan."
Mornings, I hold it like a Gideon Bible
reading aloud to women gathered
for meditation.
Laura sits upright,
like it's her first time at church.
Kelsey turns her phone face down,
black coffee balanced on her lap.
All of us mindful of not moving
while the words move.
Not watching the watcher—
watching language
arrive one paper cup at a time.
We ride the swan boats
in Echo Park Lake.
I steer, turning the handle
against instinct.
We paddle the perimeter,
in and out of shade
beneath imported palms,
past lotus beds.
As we pull in to dock,
someone says
people have died here—
drowned, drunk.
A man in a blue vest
waves us over.
We step out,
bookless, sober,
still turning the wrong way
to come in.
Alison Henderson is a queer poet from Montreal, based in Los Angeles, whose work moves through North America: recovery, incarceration, freedom, and what it means to be seen. Poems appear in Velvet Grey.
Emerge Literary Journal 