GARY CHARLES WILKENS

At Borders Bookstore, Which is Gone

I see it in my brightly-lit nightmares of Tulsa:
on your last day at the bookstore you helped
someone find a book that taught them about
the Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus, ending up
with them migrating to India and becoming
a sadhu, the smoke of the chillum rising forever.

On the day before you hung yourself with cord
you recommended to someone a CD
that opened them to the blues and eventually
sent them to Mississippi in search of the true
grave of Robert Johnson and they found it.

Before death did you and your new wife part
you gave a wink and a discount to a woman
fresh from selling plasma for a resume book;
the job she got with its help led to a business
and founded an empire, employing millions.

But for yourself you could recommend nothing.
Nothing in Self Help or Bibles kept you from
becoming gray dust, nothing in Music made
you stay sane for a little while to listen, none
of the stationary prompted you to write me.

Gary Charles Wilkens’ book, The Red Light Was My Mind, won the 2006 Texas Review Breakthrough Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in The Texas Review, Moon City Review, Passages North, the Adirondack Review, James Dickey Review, and Melancholy Hyperbole. He is Associate Professor of English at Norfolk State University and Chair of the Department of English and Foreign Languages.