GROCERY SHOPPING HERE ON EARTH

By John Grey

 

There’s row after row

and then there are more rows –

some are stacked to the rafters

with soda bottles and cereals –

others are lower to the ground,

piled high with fruits and vegetables –

then there are the freezer cabinets –

be quick in and out

or the glass doors fog up.

Every product is, according to the label,

superior to its rivals –

and logos leer at me

from tigers to parrots to chunky fat men –

while some woman in a cook’s hat

tries to shove a smidgen of salami down my throat

and a pyramid of toilet paper topples

and a guy almost pokes out my eye

with a long loaf of Italian bread.

Kids scream,

couples bicker over choice

of salad dressing, .

a teen talks teen talk

into a cell phone

and an old lady

runs over my foot

with her carriage,

then snarls when I don’t apologize –

so it’s not all impersonal.

And now they have self-checkout –

which could mean running the stuff you’re buying

over an electric eye

or, when you’re done teen talking,

snapping a quick portrait of yourself

with your phone.

I prefer being totaled up by a gum-snapping girl

while I browse the headlines of the tabloids ~

Hollywood starlet gives birth to alien baby –

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in the Homestead Review, Poetry East and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Harpur Palate, the Hawaii Review and North Dakota Quarterly.