Have you heard the news? Publishers Weekly reports that a Japanese insurance company purchased Toronto-based ebook seller, Kobo, for $315 million dollars. My initial response registered somewhere in the anger/betrayal range of the emotional spectrum. Rather than spend a lot of time bitching, I channeled that anger into a poem.
reading underwater,
words burble and pop
in the light up there,
the bright crisp, while
kobo kobo kobo
the well-oiled pistons
of the juggernaut
metal leviathan
jaws wide, throat
ready to swallow
swim, you minnows,
you selfish
shelf-ish shell
fish, you inky
preoccupied
octopi, swim,
you albacore
and dolphins and
plankton, don’t
forget the plankton
kobo kobo kobo
with its sonar
and torpedoes dark
the underbelly hull
swim, for reading
is at a premium
now the looming mass
of capital slicks
over the deep, its
killing drops adrift
on the roiling swell and
seep into our scales
still it rumbles on
kobo kobo kobo
circling overhead
for another pass