HEREBY

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

The mayor, in the course of a long dedication speech, reiterated that the new community center connected via overground walking bridge to the new library, and urged the town’s young people to avail themselves of the latter. “If you read a hundred things a day and one speaks to you to such a degree that you spark to it, and that moment of inspiration unfurls in imitation, slavish at first, emulation that verges on crude copying, but that over the course of the ensuing hour, and the day that follows, and the week that then slides through time, you find yourself introducing a single original thought or gesture or turn of phrase, and the piece read becomes a piece written, in whatever small way one becomes the other, then you have, all on your own, justified the cost of these shelves and volumes and in fact the entire complex, which also includes an indoor basketball court and an indoor pool, a snack bar and a billiards table, as well as an upstairs office with one key that is in my possession, and in that office I will sit often in a plush chair and close my eyes and try to encourage the alchemical process that I have sketched out above. Though you may not know I am there, I am there, a presence above, a signal, a spur, a jolt in the atmosphere.” He paused, sipped water, cleared his throat. He was not nearly done.