Housecleaning. I looked through my poetry list (yes, I keep one, because if I didn’t, I think you might be reading the same poems over and over here!) and I realize there is a number of poems that have gotten forgotten along the way. I didn’t finish them or didn’t remember they existed or something happened to keep me from resolving things. I decided to do a clean up to complete them and let them see the light of day. So for the next few posts that’s what will be happening – some of the poems are more than a year or two old and some, well, they are less than that!

So I’ll start with this one here.

Subversive Lawless Behavior

The lights ranged in rows
above the aisles in the grocery
shine on me with enthusiasm
as I pass underneath them.
Carrot rounds float in neat tiers inside glass jars.
Chicken legs lie thigh to ankle in the glass case.
I move up and down the aisles in a zig-zag pattern.
My arm reaches out to grab an item
when cued by the displays. Of course I regret the disruption
of the beautiful symmetry
but it is necessary.
Tea bags line up one behind the other. They greet me
through the cellophane windows of their cardboard boxes
like residents of an apartment house
watching a parade.
I progress on my way. A can of peas calls out to me
from the bottom of the shopping cart
where I have tossed it
without a care for where
or how
it landed.
I gather
it is upset at all the sloshing.

grocery store