Lawrence Hall: Garage-Sale Rolodex for Seventy-Five Cents

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Tuesday, March 17, 2026

Lawrence Hall

Unknown Saint – 25 Cents

A little plastic statue of a saint

(In context, am I permitted to say “tchotchke?”)

A woman in white with a flowered crown

And a tiny crucifix in her tiny hand

She stood between a broken-bladed pocketknife

And an HO gauge caboose without wheels

There was a Barbie with her arms ripped off

And an I LIKE IKE button from 1952

The little saint now stands upon my shelf

Gently to remind me of my better self

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Garage-Sale Rolodex® for Seventy-Five Cents

I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed,

debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.

-Patrick McGoohan as Number Six in The Prisoner

The Rolodex was once a symbol of power

Of knowledge marshalled into sequences

Orderly sequences alphabetized by names

By names and cross indices of subjects and dates

Of enemies or allies or contacts, rarely friends

Condensed in ink on smoothly finished cards

Restrained in place by colored plastic tabs

Awaiting the stroke of an office tyrant’s hand

The Rolodex was subsumed within The ‘Phone

Thus still your life cannot be called your own