Remaindered

Remaindered

No longer upright like soldiers,

Neatly shelved, spines straight-stacked,

Alphabetical order, fiction authors A to Z,

But tumbled, piled at random,

Stickered, scattered, reduced, remaindered,

Bargain bin, basement bucket,

Rough treatment at many hands,

Edges knocked, jackets torn,

Dirty, dusty, fingered and forgotten,

Marked and marked down,

With no dignity or ceremony at the end of life.

More space is needed

To make way for the new stuff,

The spirit of today, what’s happening now,

Celebrity authors and TV tie-ins,

Titles that sell, units that shift,

The next thing, the new wave,

Modern, fashionable, exciting,

Where it’s at, de nos jours,

Moving with the times,

The zing of the zeitgeist,

The ring of the till.

No room for the out-of-print,

Except out of the way,

Out of sight, out of mind,

Deleted from the catalogue,

The stock-code and the index,

A lingering demise,

And a delayed disposal,

Awaiting final solution,

Dumped, shredded, pulped,

The bulk commodity of paper.

A never-borrowed nor ever-bought,

Unread volume,

No reviews, no royalties, no renown,

He handles a copy, thumbing pages,

Familiar with every word,

The effort it cost him,

Regretful, bitter,

Flees from the bookshop, the door left flapping.

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2013