I'll open her up in due time

Here’s Anna Mendelssohn’s:“I’m Working Here”

made available to me by the busy folks at Amazon

for half-a-hundred bucks,–– so I bought it, and it arrived

USPS late yesterday afternoon, all 779 pages of it, intact.

There it sits on the plain of the annex to a larger table,

its unknown contents already heavier than my brain,–– 

and looking at it, its bulk and its requirements, I’m reminded

of R. Crumb's vision of Charles Bukowski one morning

as he sat at the edge of his bed, hunched-over, lacing his shoes

thinking: “Christ Almighty, Now What?”