FROM UNDERWORLD LIT

(Fall Term)

XVIII

Browsing the criticism section of the campus used bookshop, I unearth a copy of my scholarly monograph on postcolonial Graveyard Poets, already thick with dust, misplaced between Ramazani and Ransom.

“Goodnight bears,” Mira says, knocking over a tower of unshelved philology. “Goodnight chairs.”

Opening to the flyleaf, I turn up the inscription—penned, in my defense, under the influence of departmental