Bargain Circus
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Clown prince of bargain shops—those penny-anteXanadus that take up half a block—was the La Brea Circus. Huge barn chock-full of overstock, a poor man's horn of plenty,
where we, though broke as sparrows, like canariesflitted about, whistled with disbeliefat deals—no, steals!—that would abash a thief:Bic pens for nickels, dollar dictionaries!
I wore my Webster's out, clumsily wooingthe tongue in which I sing this dime store's praise.But they're worn too, my memories of those days,like VHS tapes after years of viewing
and spooling backwards to the sweetest spot.Oh yes, that was another thing we bought:a plastic sports-car VHS rewinder—so obsolete, so perfectly designed for
its vanished purpose, like a streamlined hearseinexorably heading in reverse. [End Page 69]
BORIS DRALYUK is the editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books. He is coeditor of The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry and translator of Isaac Babel, Mikhail Zoshchenko, and other authors. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The New Criterion, NYRB, The Yale Review, and elsewhere.
