Here I am taking my place with day-old bread and dented cans. Yet not beyond my shelf-life.
I'm walking here, I'm walking; the cart is my walker. It leads me to berries and cherries. I shall not want. The man who waters the lettuce anoints me. My life runneth over. I fear nothing as I walk in the shadows of gondolas.
Shoppers affixed on bulletins breaking into barcodes breaking into QRs to be scanned. We are being tracked and surveilled into the nakedness of our consumption. Buy one, second half-price.
There goes Walt Whitman hearing America's yawp through leaves of grass. I’m listening to Benny Goodman's clarinet Sing, Sing, Sing.
There are no women to come and go speaking of Michelangelo or even Joe DiMaggio. Where have you gone, Clifton Fadiman? We need your Information, Please. Answers are in Jeopardy.
Yet, it’s all here. This garden of tulips breathing Amsterdam air. Picasso turning bananas to goldfinch. The still life of peaches is stirring. Teas steeping. Sodas fizzing. Heirlooms pulsing. Pollock dripping. Ginsberg howling.
Melons pregnant each with their palette. Celery stalks at midnight. Monet stroking impressions of lotus. Larkin cultivating his depression from Wordsworth's daffodils. Rauschenberg eyeing the assemblage on the conveyor belt beeping and bagged while Calder studies the balancing display at the end of an aisle.
There’s a wedding procession coming down two aisles to take their vows at the check stand, I now pronounce you. Reception in the parking lot. It's the marriage of everything, baked and frozen, fresh and wilted, organic and forbidden. Tops off the carrots. Peel me a grape.
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