In the children’s section of a bookstore all is colored in fuzzy shades of pale yellow, the floors, the chairs, the walls, even the bookshelves and the books.
On the next to top shelf of the center display, where the latest books are advertised, there is a new book with the title “The Cocks and Cuns of Despair”.
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Yellow alphabet pieces, spelling it out, have been lined up along the full length of the shelf. It’s an unusual title. It does not seem appropriate for a children’s book, even without the letter T.
Is this then a common phrase? because I wanted to use it somewhere in my book, but if it is common, beyond just a phrase in a Jim Morrison poem, I might not.
I look down at a black woman sitting on the edge of one of the yellow overstuffed couches. The woman is heavy, she wears a white patterned dress and her face is framed with a white headscarf. She holds the book in her hand, it is open in her lap, and she is reading it out loud to a baby who lies hidden, in a pram to the left of her.
Still it does not seem appropriate to read this book to a child.
She looks up at me forlornly when she catches me looking at her.
Except Jim Morrison’s words got reversed. Collage by Nadine Kelly via Flickr.
