Poem #26: Grocery Store Gods

Wednesday afternoons
Are when the end will come;
When the sky screams red
And bloody, sound of
Shopping cart wheels
Turning corners

The quiet is sanctuary,
Sheep in skins human
Roll carts and hopes through aisles
To the tune of
Old pop songs,
We are the music
We make in the dark,
We are the shoppers,
Alone with the cart-

Men alone crawl like something
Not properly evolved,
Like they have not shed
Their shells,
Their baskets are full,
Their eyes are-

This woman’s heels
Click, breaking the silence
That we have imposed,
She is tall, and dark skin,
And alone.
Staring at packets
Of cornflour and salt,
She is here
She is not
She is-

The little girl staring
The list in her head reading:
Milk, eggs, coffee-
Shit. What else?
She’s too young to do this
Yet too old to be young
In this freezer-space world,
She is-

The employee roams aisles
Off duty, we wonder,
Does she want this?
Surrounded by labels,
To buy them, to sell them,
To go home and love them,
Love is a bargain
On grocery store shelves.

They wander;
They weave.
Their stories are endless
Like stars on horizon
We reach out to touch them,
Our eyes are on fire,
The signals they can’t see
At dark.

We know, now, the sorrow
We invented the longing,
We are the last lobsters
The emptying tank,
Watching the shoppers
As bleary eyes seek us,
And whisper-

“thank god that’s not me.”

While we mouth,

“thank god I’m not you”

And the grocery store gods
Make us whole.