I Go for Supplies

Poetry by Ruby Hansen Murray | From Issue 31, Summer 2026

I Go for Supplies

Evening, a downtown library.
Lavender in the garden empty 
of bees. Books on Black

history, Black boys’ joy, 
Black soldiers after WWII 
where I look to find Quartermaster, 
the stories my father told. A rack 

of books wrapped with pink hearts
and twine, pale green bamboo 
paper with glitter to choose blind. 
Upstairs, books on peace, study of-

animal picture books, charcoal 
sketches of bison. A young girl 
who sees a bison in winter 
and feeds it. Sleeping warm together, 

soft eyes, mother bison and a golden 
calf sip a French teacup with cornflower 
stems. The artist¹, trained in Belgium, 
sketching maybe-Native figures, 

a short-rounded figure with furry hair, 
bison among evergreens, concerned glances
as the animal leaves, returns when they are 
both old, streaks of white in the same wild hair.

My Bison, Wisniewski, Gaya. Princeton Architectural, Mar. 2020.

↩︎

Ruby Hansen Murray (she/they)

Ruby Hansen Murray writes about multi-generational communities in the Osage Nation and her home in the lower Columbia River; her poetry chapbook On East Sunny Sands is forthcoming from Red Bird Chapbooks in 2027 and Star People, focused on life in the Osage will be published by the University of Arizona Press in early 2028.

Author Note

Libraries are an essential community resource, an affirmation of the unlimited potential in each of us. I remember Pantaloon, the black French poodle who wanted to be a baker, fondly. I read and re-read a collection of the original dark Grimm’s fairy tales with spare black and white sketches. My aunt was an archivist. Libraries are communal spaces embodying the possibility that we can make sense of the world together, support each other in that endeavor, and that all community members are valuable. They offer personal contact in a digital world, an essential aspect of our humanity.