14 September, 2009

Saving Edward Abbey

50 percent off day at Goodwill

and the wife and I waded

into the crowd

out for what they could get

loading shopping carts with shit

other people throw away. I know

better than to follow her around

when she’s shopping – even though

it was a specific trip this time,

for art supplies. Frames and boards. So

I strolled into the books and records

section to kill time and to see

what books didn’t make the cut. At first,

it was the usual kind of stuff. Religious tracts.

Bible study guides. Diet books. Self-help minutiae.

Outdated textbooks. A bunch of old literary journals

and college literature texts – looked like

some poor bastard either got the point of it all

or was evicted. Came across a hard cover Nabokov.

I passed it over. Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet

was meant for someone else. Left a Thomas Wolfe—

one more whiner in the stack won’t make

a difference. Contemporary pulp with

made into movie covers. Jammed between

a Vegan cookbook promising Tasty

Tofu Sloppy Joes and

a biography of the Pope, I spied a copy

of The Monkey Wrench Gang. It was just

a mass market paperback. No pious introductions,

glossaries, reader’s guides, or hollow critical

interpretations by scholars

who wouldn’t know good writing

if it car-jacked them mid-day

on an empty city street. The price sticker

on the spine read $1.99. I looked around.

I was sandwiched between a woman

who looked like she inhaled cheap romance novels

and ice cream with the same speed

and a housewife

with an annoyed husband standing behind her

(he hadn’t learned not to follow) either

waiting on her to be done or

protecting her from the grabby hands

of the questionable folk who shop

at Goodwill… one of them might

grab her ass or (even worse)

his credit card. She moved on

and I was going to grab the book and go;

but she was replaced by

an asthmatic shopping cart stuffer

in search of the perfect book

to cure her raging kleptomania. I waited.

I kept my eye on the book. For a second

I thought the romance eater

might grab Abbey first, but she picked one

with sleazy cover, all cleavage and broad

shoulders, and squeezed out

of the narrow aisle. I saw my chance,

grabbed the book, and escaped,



only to find my wife standing there

staring at me and wondering

what the hell was taking me

so long.