Grocery Girl

The glass doors bow open as I enter like a demigod
Begin to pin the tail on the merchandise
Baring teeth to strangers
Until lo the time has come to vet the things
And like St. Peter in drag the grocery girl
Waits for me with her unforgiving abacus.
It is not all beyond redeeming
Not all gathered inescapable girl
Along the gilt pull in your electric orbit.
This vibration below your eye’s benevolence
Is reducible. The cyclonic whirling of blurted
Little-wisdoms toward your blackhole breathing-
O witness the fabric heaving!
-is diminishable. The bewilderment in scent
With drift abandoned is mortal; it has a span.
We present therefore to thy adamantine
Stiletto heel our rucked and false foreheads.
Like the poetess with her barbed wire mouth
The head holds court impaled on a giant smile.
Look: her hair is the godhead of black cashmere!
Her fingertips gild the unutterable wishes of princes!
Surrounding me the shuffling feet crescendo like symbols.
An old man pokes me with his cane: move along.
A hundred wailing cellos will misplay
Each ruined lover’s dolorous aria
On the derelict day and from the grocery girl
I cannot look away.


(c) Rhett Talley