never trust a man with a typewriter between his lips
Images from the Special Collections of the University of British Columbia.
Stan
I only met you yesterday, uncle
though you did not meet me
as I poured through the endless papers
sitting in cartons
organized artificially
by a librarian named Cynthia.
Yellowed and creased I hear your words
spoken through the typewriter between your lips,
set within your bearded face,
injected between the lines by your bobbing blue fountain pen
floating on the paper and the words and the ideas
marking measuredly, unsatisfied.
We shared an original thought about the endless tombstone
fields marching forth to the factory that can only be glimpsed
from the LIE as one is lured into the city by the other
stone monuments that stick out of the ground in planned, regular rows
while ascending the hill, Manhattanbound.
I see the reflections of my father's signature in yours,
hear my grandmother's voice in the recordings of your readings
echoing through the tapes that have been sitting in the stacks
waiting
for me to request them
waiting
for 34 for years.
Your deep tone and hearty laugh and throaty cough
sound so familiar, at yet so foreign
as I record them on my laptop,
piped in from a reel-to-reel player that was dusted off upon my request.
It brags in an unmistakably 70s font of playing in stereo!
Your voice is in mono.
Nonetheless it reaches my ears and I can see you
sitting behind your desk or rocking on a cool leather chair
with a tremendous microphone, stroking your beard and inspecting
the world in your own way and your own time.
I miss you uncle, though I only met you yesterday, as
I sorted through the papers you left when you left.