poem22 Apr 2019 08:00 pm
Detail from the Annunciation

by Robert Borski

Among the far stacks, whispers stir the air,
but this time, it’s not the books conducting
their regularly-scheduled audio checks,
but a rant that seems to come up out of nowhere
(or possibly not: earlier, an infected book has 
been purged of interpolated blue material,
so the kibitz may be viral in nature) —
a babel of voices complaining about bitcoin
fines, compression ratios, the inherent danger
of bathtub reads, and as always seems
to be the case whenever a talkfest breaks out, 
the ever controversial taxonomic racism 
of Dewey (“Please, sir or madam, I do
not belong in the Science Fiction section, 
I am Literature.
“) — until at last, trundling 
up the aisle, the emboldened robot librarian, 
putting a silver-gray finger to lips, reminds 
them of where they are, and then, overriding 
their programming, enjoins them all to “Shush.”

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