Live Encounters Poetry & Writing April 2026
The Librarian, poem by Julian Matthews.
The Librarian
It’s raining–
I shake my umbrella exaggeratedly at the door
I’m late tonight, yet, at the counter, her eyes smile
She slips me the note: 851.1 PET
I dawdle between shelves, as if lost, looking hither and thither
I live for the smells of these endless rows of books:
vanilla musk, earthy mushrooms, pine-fresh newness
Once in an aged page, I found a pencilled note scribbled in the margin:
“Remember this for Anne!!”
Oh, the mystery!
Here we are: Petrarch’s Canzoniere
It’s all in Italian but Page 118 is annotated
with her trademark pink sticky-note in the middle
I google-translate with my phone:
“She keeps me in a prison that she neither
opens nor shuts, nor claims me for her own”
I hang on those words like the last dewdrop on a thawing leaf
Last Tuesday, it was 814.52 GIB
“Love one another but make not a bond of chains:
let it be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.”
I responded with 861.62 NER
“I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”
Ew, so crass in retrospect
My brain races: Keats, Shelley, the ever-reliable Shakespeare sonnet?
I’m such an illiterate peasant, stuck in old cliches
Maybe, I should move away from the 800s
I wander into the maze of shelves giddy with this new thrill
like a 10-year-old at a treasure hunt
Something more contemporary, less soppy
My index finger tracks down the hardcovers at 152.41:
Alain de Botton’s The Course of Love,
Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving,
John Gray’s Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus?
Too glib
I can hear people shuffling out the door, self-scanning
or queueing to have books stamped by her
It’s almost closing and I peek through the shelves
and she’s Venus under the lone fluorescent above her
The light glinting off her tight braids and soft curls like a halo
I am getting desperate, sweating–
Switch back to 823s: English Fiction (late 20th century),
I scan Jilly Cooper, Jackie Collins, Sally Rooney
I vaguely remember the series Normal People
I thumb through it like a madman
The trick to the most-read page is to place the book
on its spine on the table then let it open itself
No luck! More lovey-dovey drivel
Then I spy across the shelves, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s
A Hundred Years of Solitude, a definite keeper
I lay it taut on the nearest table, and let it flop open
There it is, Page 375:
“It’s enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.”
I place a fresh blue sticky-note inside, fumbling with excitement
There are three copies, so I let this one stick out a bit
I write down 863.64 MAR on the back of her original note, fold it in two
The lights are being switched off, an indicator for the laggards, heads
buried in newspapers, that it’s time to go
My hands trembling, I approach her counter
We exchange knowing smiles.
“No books today, sir?” her face glowing like Bellini’s Madonna
and I’m the baby in her arms
“Nope, I am swamped, up to my ears,” I stutter and kick myself
The note slides across the counter and into her pocket
We nod in sync
I step out and the rain has slowed to a drizzle
Next Tuesday awaits
© Julian Matthews
Julian Matthews is a mixed-race poet from Malaysia. He was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by Dream Catcher magazine/Stairwell Books, UK, in 2022. He is published in The American Journal of Poetry, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Loch Raven Review, Live Encounters and New Verse News, among 60 other literary journals and anthologies in 17 countries. Link: https://linktr.ee/julianmatthews