It’s July 4th by Jonathan Hayes

At City Light’s bookstore – no one is here today upstairs in the poetry room,
while sitting in the poet’s chair by the open window.

I’m reading a collection by _______ _______________.

Mind at a steady calm, but that ol’ perpetrator, Loneliness, over shadows the current page on my lap for a good minute, until I stand up from the wooden rocking chair and

see a tattered black nylon scarf lying like a dead snake coiled on the floor planks,
and no one else will be up here today,

after I walk down the stairs.

Author bio:

Jonathan Hayes lives in San Francisco, California. He is the editor/publisher of the long-running American small press journal Over the Transom. His book-length poem T(HERE) was released by Silenced Press (Ohio, 2010).