Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Poetry
Upon Stealing Smithsonian Folkways from Franklin Library, Summer 1974
My plans for sainthood were falling apart anyway.
I’d started thinking about giving —wrong— a try.
Some secret sort of violence. Crime.
What I meant to do was steal something.
Anything. This would be a start.
There were records in the town library collection
that weren’t for borrowing.
You were supposed to listen to them there.
I walk back from town with the folio tucked inside my coat.
Each disc in its brittle brown waxy paper sleave
—these like heavy pages of a heavy book
binding of canvas tape
blackened in places and starting to fray.
The recordings were of different tribes, different regions, their songs.
That one started with the question, chanted
again and again and again—
is this real is this real this life I am living?
is this real is this real this life?
Tom Driscoll is a poet, columnist, and essayist who lives and works in Lowell, Massachusetts. “The Champion of Doubt” published summer 2023 from Finishing Line Press. Driscoll’s poetry has appeared in Abraxas Review, Oddball Magazine, Carcosa Review, Scapegoat, Ekphrastic Review, Paterson Literary Review, and The Worcester Review.