Photography © Glenn Bowie

 

Library Saturdays, 1965, Wichita, Kansas

Bob Myers and I drove my Mom’s rose-creamed Corvair
or his dad’s ’58 Buick, rear view dice. Bob didn’t care.

Going the old public library., driver’s licenses in our pockets,
smelled new as glue, as last year did our model rockets.

We combed the stacks of 33s. I grabbed the Leadbelly.
Bob, the Boots Randolph. Sometimes would go Mickey

or with Mark Ulrich would be looking for John Coltrane
or Maynard Ferguson. His dad was a doctor, had a name

in town. Bob and I didn’t know who we were yet, didn’t have a mask
to waltz into the record store on East William and free ask

for Zombie 45s, demos played in over the air
but they couldn’t really sell. We could then pile back into our

getaway car. Or we’d walk to Bucks Department store
hang out in carrels with headphones for an hour or more.

The booths were private as minds. We asked them to put on
for us the new sounds from Nashville and London.

Those days they would, though obviously our lifeguard wages
could not afford to buy their “Romance for the Ages”

monthly classical series, nor even anything that we liked for.
So far, there was no proof yet anything existed we could pay for.

Back in my room, we listened through the pops and skips,
to tortuous yelps and screeches on the worn library disks.

A man abused a sax on songs as the widow cried next door.
Or just out of prison, a murderer’s voice cried in terror

of love. Ah, love! It was all we talk about and all that adds
up all next week in the back row of Bob’s dad’s

5th hour algebra class. The apples of the high school’s eye,
girls sat up front geometrically – the unknowns, x and y.

 

Paul Dickey is the author of several collections of poetry, including recently Anti-Realism in Shadows at Suppertime (2022) and A Reading of Dali (Likely Misunderstood) Which is Twenty Meters Become the Poet’s Self-portrait (2022). Dickey lives in Omaha and is retired from teaching in philosophy.

Glenn Bowie is a published poet, lyricist, musician and photographer from the Boston area. He also owns and operates an elevator company that supplies custom-built elevators for clients from New England to Hollywood. The author of two poetry and photograph collections (Under the Weight of Whispers and Into the Thorns and Honey) from Big Table Publishing, he donates all profits from his books to various charities for the homeless and local animal shelters.