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Bookshop Blues

I wish I could leave this book’s orange spine.

I’ve been Great Fiction’s symbol for too long.

It’s time someone thought up a new design -

a parrot, a panda, a porcupine,

Kylie or Kermit or even King Kong.

I wish I could leave this book’s orange spine.

I’m sick of James Joyce and Ms Gertrude Stein.

Their prose is a mess, the English all wrong.

It’s time someone thought up a new design.

Could make, with my mates, a big chorus line.

Could tap dance down from this shelf with a song.

I wish I could leave this book’s orange spine.

The black tie and tails I’ve got would do fine

(though webbed feet mean I’d just waddle along).

It’s time someone thought up a new design.

Let’s have ‘No Logo’ says Naomi Klein.

Let’s leave a gap where right now I belong.

I wish I could leave this book’s orange spine. 

It’s time someone thought up a new design.

Susan Richardson

 (from Creatures of the Inter-Tidal Zone)