Tonight marks the grand re-opening of the Elliot Bay Book Company’s store in Seattle. For those of you in the area, this isn’t news, just an update. For those of you elsewhere, Elliot Bay Books is a Seattle landmark — one of the finest and largest independent booksellers in the world. Recently the store moved from Pioneer Square to Capitol Hill. Do stop by and welcome EBB to its new home. We look forward to walking around with our head tilted at a 45 degree angle, craning to read the titles of books while the hours slip away and the sky grows dark.

Perhaps it’s easier to call love dead
than accuse you of changing shapes.

You have waited for me since
the day I tried Thai food. It changed

me, set a string of notable events
tumbling across my diary pages,

the foray into that other suburb,
a band found that I would travel

Great distances to hear again, but haven’t,
similar to how you’ve been missing

all of this not at all & that’s fine.
Let’s remember you have nothing

to do with the arc towards the death
of my motivation, the depth of my

depression, me in the right place
to find the public library bearable and

Zen books worthwhile, hence somehow
our meeting at this Viet coffee shop

six A.M. one of these annoying Tuesdays,
you ready to start a new chapter about

a fling with some sweetly creepy guy,
the next page in your snarky chick-lit.

In this pre-emptive breakup, can I keep
the café? Go look fulfilled elsewhere.

We all knew you’d be here and
no one wants to be seen coming.

______________________________________

Johnny Chinnici is a graduate of the University North Texas and currently lives in Houston. His poetry and essays have appeared in Gigantic Sequins and North Texas Review, and he maintains a blog of poems and musings on baseball at Ninety Feet.

Overwhelmed By The Word

Le Petit Monsieur Triste.  Our rough French translation tells us this means the sad little man. Now why would we start Thursday’s Flurry with an Edith Piaf song, especially when it is a beautiful day, we’re not bitter, and we haven’t been spurned or abused? Because sometimes the beauty of a song is being unable to comprehend its true meaning. Granted, Piaf’s voice does sing with the sadness of a million of those little songbirds (and after seeing La Vie En Rose, we don’t blame her), but hope can also be found in the message of her voice. Literature may often spring from a state of sadness, but we enjoy it for its lessons and beauty, no? After all, who can deny the sad pleasure of conversing with dead poets, or with Roberto Bolano’s translator? Who can say that artist and poet Star Black’s next book of poetry or her new art exhibit will not bring us to tears? The Bushwick Book Club, you say? Nah, they’re just going to choose which books we read. And what about Muriel Spark, who was a la petite femme triste long before she found success, who will say her story is a sad song? Edith Piaf, maybe. Us, no way. — Andrew Geer

Video: Edith Piaf’s Le Petit Monsieur Triste