I went shopping. I hadn't gone to a bookstore in so many days, because I've been so busy. Let me tell you about it.

MOE'S:

• Issue #4 of a New York poetry journal called Torque, dated 1996. Edited by Elizabeth Fodaski. Poems by Bruce Andrews, Laynie Browne, Alan Davies, Stacy Doris, Mark DuCharme, Robert Fitterman, Elizabeth Fodaski, Graham Foust, Barbara Guest, Bob Harrison, Jeff Hull, Deirdre Kovac, Bill Luoma, Dan Machlin, Elizabeth MacKiernan, Melanie Nelson, Nick Piombino, Heather Ramsdell, Kim Rosenfield, Spenser Selby, Sally Silvers, Rod Smith, and Fiona Templeton
• a 1985 edition of Gil Ott's Traffic published by Singing Horse Press
• Roberto Tejada's 1999 chapbook Gift & Verdict
• a Carnegie-Mellon edition of Denis Johnson's The Incognito Lounge, which I've already got in the earlier Random House edition but reckoned at $6.60 I'd get and give to a friend, which I did
• Joshua Marie Wilkinson's Suspension of a Secret in Abandoned Rooms

TOTAL EXPEDITURE: less than $25


DOG EARED BOOKS:

• Works & Days by Bill Luoma (Hard Press/The Figurines, 1998) for $7.50

DOG EARED HAS A SMALL BUT FANTASTIC SELECTION OF USED CONTEMPORARY POETRY TITLES.


CITY LIGHTS:

• a new copy (?!) of Linh Dinh's Drunkard Boxing (Tinfish, 1998) for $8, obviously waiting for me

I am online all the time clicking isbn.nu, SPD, ABE, Alibris, and Amazon. I do it for a living. I click all day at work with my index finger, and when I get home, for fun, I click with my thumb. I love bookstores. Please don't call them brick-and-mortars. Words like that make me puke.