The Reader

thank (   ) there was a word
in the beginning
a word somebody
some barely de-aped undraped human
scraped onto the moss
                  of a rock
   with a bamboo twig
his name

iamudapd
he called himself

there was no going back then
before you knew it
there were seventeen Gutenberg versions
of Joshua and Revelation

none of them the same

and there was

Black Like Me and Moby Dick and The Status Seekers and Leaves of Grass and Howl and the New York Times and Harry Potter and the Autobiography of Malcolm X

and there was

no going back to bamboo

or Gutenberg or

(    )