a time capsule of dust
nefertiti smiles
miles davis stares stage left
through matte black wood bins
in a spartan store
in a depressed town
church spires through windows
and an always vacant stage
this is a time capsule of dust
forgotten side street
where stock is stale and still
where lps are albatross
new formats bring abandon
I come weekly, skipping class
slow graze imagine
sounds from covers
liner notes conjuring
slowly eating inventory
slowly building vocabulary
six bucks is a princely sum
by mid-nineties standards
but a small price for fraternity
and maybe I didn't know
that's what I was buying
at the counter, a big man
basso buddha with diabetes
gruff voiced wrestler expounds
from the stacks of a library mind
he always has some insignificant minutiea
that leads to a dead afternoon
conversation, sound and vision
I'm picking his brain
expanding beyond my ears
as I said it's building vocabulary
years later I would run into him
another record store dying
our rolls reversed
I would remind him
of those afternoons lost
how they led me here
to my own library mind
as I said it was about fraternity
there is a clumsy grace
in the moments we find ourselves
chrysalis and seed pods
blowing in breezes around
creeks named connoquenessing
traffic flowing past
formative forgotten spaces
still sometimes there no words
for our shepherds, those people
who cling at the outskirts
with the tenacity of ghosts
About the Author: Jason Baldinger is a poet and photographer from Pittsburgh, PA. He is the co-editor of Trailer Park Quarterly and co-runs The Odd-Month Reading Series. He’s penned fifteen books of poetry the newest of which include, A History of Backroads Misplaced: Selected Poems 2010-2020 (Kung Fu Treachery), and American Aorta (OAC Books). His first book of photography, Lazarus (OAC Books), was just released. He has two ekphrastic collaborations (with poets Rebecca Schumejda and Robert Dean) and a fourth collaboration with Kansas City Poet James Benger forthcoming. His work has appeared across a wide variety of online sites and print journals. You can hear him read from various books on Bandcamp and on lps by The Gotobeds and Theremonster.
Image Credit: “Miles Davis from a 1967 press photo” Public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
As It Ought To Be 
