poem of the day 08.22.14

dystopia in the canned food aisle

i keep thinking maybe she’ll move her cart

so i can squeeze by and get those

cans of cat food that i need

but there’s too much for her to do on her phone

status updates and games of chance

when she looks up

she gives me one of those asshole smirks

scoots the cart aside an inch

just to let me know how much i can go and fuck myself

so i think the hell with it

and back up toward the next aisle

which is a sea of rusted carts and angry faces

flabby bodies junked up on antibiotic meats and chemical tomatoes

scratching off items from their lists

and playing on their cell phones too

the stock boys are flinging boxes against displays

cackling mad as cans roll all over the ground

they look as if they’ll never escape this degradation

this dystopia in the canned food aisle

where there is a sweating kid in a carriage screaming

but it’s mine!  but it’s mine!

wailing, holding her hands toward a can of chicken noodle soup

whose sodium content seems to baffle everyone

as her mother says out loud

hey, i don’t even think there’s chicken in this

right before a display of baked chips

comes raining down on my head

hit from behind by a woman pushing a cart the size of a tank

slowly rumbling its way down red square.

or the streets of suburban america.