Old Vessels He courted you for months and brought you to New York’s best houses. The notices were fair, I’m sure, but he craved a prize. Aboard Mauretania for the crossing, he probably left you in a deck chair overnight while he sat at the bar plotting his next one. Now wedged in steerage in this leaky vessel of a shop, jilted and jacketless, his name tattooed to your spine, you sell yourself for nickels and dimes. I thumb your leaves back to front to learn your recent history: a tryst with a casual reader who probably found you in a dump like this, wrote his name on your flyleaf, took you to the Caymans or the Keys, then dropped you here with just a postcard to mark the point he stopped. I am so sorry. My dear, you deserve better. I watch the dim ones shuffle past, shuffle past. Only a few bright ones scan the shelves for ones like you for what we needed long ago and still need now-- a passage missing from our own accounts to turn us elsewhere inside out to another entirely while remaining remotely ourselves. After all, isn’t this why we read—so turning a page might connect us to the other? We have all have been with others, been used, amused, and passed around. I open you slowly to your middle signature, press my nose to your yellow leaves, breathe in almonds and vanilla flowers, yes, recto-verso, repeat, yes, yes, so bosky and feminine your scent, I think you were a Daphne once and I am mad Apollo for you now. Your aubergine cover trending mauve suggests a Bordeaux tonight. Are you free? Of course. I’ll tip the steward as we debark. Daniel Coyle Daniel Coyle recently retired from a career as a harmless drudge in the information industry. He lives in Washington DC. His poems have appeared in the Wallace Stevens Journal, Arkansas Review, Fortnightly Review, Blue Unicorn.
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June 2025
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