Dave Morice in the 1970s(?)

The poet Dave Morice used to frequent the Donut Wagon, where I had my first job as a teenager.  (I remember him as a kind, smiley man.) I  highly recommend his new book, Poetry City:  A Literary Remembrance of Iowa City, Iowa, which you don’t have to be an Iowa Citian to enjoy.

Here is one of the poems.

“The Bookseller”

Worked 12 hours today and polished
the shelves till they sparkled. Slow evening
few customers. All day long I
began, for the first time, to really enjoy
the job of bookseller, tuning in to
half-hour lunch with pay, bean soup
and salad with fellow workers
from Iowa Book & Supply, Debi, Maria
and another, whose name remains a mystery
Student asking for “Donkey’s Inferno”
& Paul telling him to write his paper
with help from a manual called
“The Elephants of Style.” Worn edge
of Wallace Stevens, torn page of
The Riverside Shakespeare, bent spine
of the quarter moon over the roofs
Here, this city, houses, like books
I ride my bike past their covers

——————1977