Dust, Paper, Comics

Business has been slow, but it's been an interesting weekend.

On Thursday, the store's order of Pity the Drowned Horses finally came in. This is Sheryl Luna's debut collection of poems. I was excited when Luna agreed to come to the store on June 3 to read with Denver's poet laureate Chris Ransick. Now that I have the book in hand and am reading it, I'm dancing on the front desk and hanging from the ceiling fan. She is a poet who can speak to the dust and conjure a world out of it. I shall stop babbling before I blow it. I want you to come to the reading and buy the book.

Stan Yan of the Squid Works collective came by on Friday. We talked about Stan's work, the world of comics, graphic novels, zines, and stockbrokers. Growing up, cartoons and comics had had no appeal to me. They belonged to lonely little boys. But then The Hulk came along and provided me with a metaphor for anger. In college, I even subjected the poor monster to the lit crit knife. I wrote how many pages on the semiotics of green? Michael Chabon only widened my perspective with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. And was I blown away by Lynd Ward's graphic novels. Forget the lonely little boys. Comics belong to the wide, wild world. Now I have to figure out if Squid Works comics belong in the bookstore.

My morning routine is to start the coffee, open the dog door, retrieve the morning paper. This morning I found a little surprise when I retrieved the paper. There was the store logo right on the front of the Post's ColoradoSunday section. The write-up wasn't much, but it was kind. I hope it brings in some customers.

There...that's my dust, paper, comics. Or is it dust, comics, paper?

-NW