2012/ginsberg

GINSBERG’S CHAIR

It sits beside the bookstore door
hard and straight, and surely
uncomfortable. Difficult to imagine
as a place anyone would want to sit.
Made to his specifications,
of height and depth and description.
I saw the rider once with his demands
where water should be placed,
the kind of bouquet he preferred,
what he would expect in terms of food.
Details have slipped with the decades since.
The bookstore owner had no acceptable chair
and so built one to please.
It sits there still a tribute to –
what? Fame, perhaps. A rarity for a poet.
Likely something that does not serve a poet well.
Any more than, I would have thought,
that chair.

8/13/12