Inspired by “The scent of the archive” website, City of London

An archive smells like licorice, a faint cigar,
bergamot. Some might think of a butcher shop or
cat urine when leafing through yellowed papers.
Dust is skin, is horsehair, is struggle, is stymied desire.
Even almond-like odors linger in parchment.
Faint embers nestle into unsuspecting letters.
Goji berry? Rose? Reader, what do you smell? Tired leather,
hints of cocoa and earth. The breakdown of
iron gall ink is burnt and sugary sweet.  
Just how many odors does an archive contain?
Kneel in an aisle, if only for a minute, lean in,
listen— do you feel the tingle of the archive within the archive?
Make room for taste, touch, smell swelling in, around, within the records.
No one told you, guest, patron of this place.
Open the book before you. Walk through wild mushrooms,
patches of tomatoes, and wet grasses. Stop taking notes.
Quiet overtakes you again and you smell an odor you can’t quite name
rippling between your hands. Yes, yes—you’re a child in the kitchen,
sourdough starter sticks to your hands. You want to shake it off.
Try as you might, it clings to you. The scents of the archive are like this.
Uncertain, you linger. You’ve forgotten why you’re there.
Vixen, confidant, hoarder—the archive slips under your skin.
Without a word, a woman in a picture book holds out a suitcase to you:
xylophones, violins, flutes. Beautiful music, she says. You can’t hear it.
Yes, yes, she insists. Listen harder, every smell has a sound.  
Zinnias swell like yeast in the dark. The librarian has turned off the lights. 

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Author’s note: Archives have always fascinated me—they hold so many wonderful stories and mysteries. In writing this poem, I was inspired by the article “The scent of the archive” published by the City of London, which discusses the different types of smells one might encounter in an archive. I fleshed out some of those details in this poem by imagining myself into that space. The abecedarian form (where the first line of the poem begins with the letter “A” and each line thereafter begins with successive letters of alphabet) allowed me to explore the expansiveness of my imagined archive formally, as well.   

Shannon K. Winston is the author of The Girl Who Talked to Paintings (Glass Lyre Press, 2021) and The Worry Doll (Glass Lyre Press, forthcoming). Her individual poems have appeared in Bracken, Cider Press Review, On the Seawall, RHINO Poetry, and elsewhere. She lives in Bloomington, IN.