Anne
Westbrook

            I don’t want to be a casino.

            I don’t want my rooms filled with slot machines

            and black jack tables.

            I don’t want to seduce grannies 

            to gamble away the grocery money

            or to have my carpets reek of Lucky Strikes.

            Casinos open too early and close 

            too late.

            I want to be a bookshop where children find Magic Treehouses

            and Pippi Longstocking, where their mothers

            can sit and rest.

            I want shelves crammed with books arranged 

            alphabetically by authors’ last names

            or by topics like sorcery, history, 

            or art.

            I hope to lure browsers with little white cards

            naming ‘staff picks’ in neat print

            or loopy script;

            to welcome readers with deep armchairs

            and the smell of coffee. Maybe a cat

            will sleep in the window.

            Let me be a place where your biggest risk

            will be rolling the dice

            on a writer you’ve never read –

            maybe Frederik Backman, 

            J. R. R. Tolkien, or Anne Lamott.

            To up the ante.

            To ante up.