Used Book: a poem du jour by Julie Kane

The poems of my friend Julie Kane are a delight: witty, lovingly crafted, brimming with heart and self-deprecating humor.  Today I thought I would share one of my favorites, a poem I adore for its transparency and for how it subtly prepares the reader for its killer last line:

Used Book

What luck—an open bookstore up ahead

as rain lashed awnings over Royal Street,

and then to find the books were secondhand,

with one whole wall assigned to poetry;

and then, as if that wasn't luck enough,

to find, between Jarrell and Weldon Kees,

the blue-on-cream, familiar backbone of

my chapbook, out of print since '83—

its cover very slightly coffee-stained,

but aging (all in all) no worse than flesh

through all those cycles of the seasons since

its publication by a London press.

Then, out of luck, I read the name inside:

The man I thought would love me till I died.

Julie's brand new book, Paper Bullets, is just out from White Violet Press.  The jacket copy calls her "our 21st Century Dorothy Parker"--high praise with which I happen to wholeheartedly concur.