dead lines
John Reinhart
like waiting to check out at
the grocery store in August
when you’re preparing for a
five-year-old’s birthday
party and the ice cream cake
is melting
while the teenage employee
lost in obscure leafy greens
dreads the return of school,
another place
to punch in codes for
obscurities that all taste
like spinach anyway – and the
older lady
whose basket brims over with
industrial size
tubes of ground beef, cartons
of cigarettes,
and frozen grated potatoes on
sale three weeks running
looks set to derail progress
indefinitely
no other lines are open:
purgatory
ought to be a breeze after
these
hours? with no distraction
beyond
aliens in the white house
celebrity love children diets
twenty-four varieties of soda
thirty-eight sweets to rot
teeth
and glaring fluorescents that
make everyone
look lightly queasy even
against summer
tans that scream against
tomorrow
today, another sign that this
line
is one sad, flat preview of a
future
where ice cream cake dribbles
uncontrollably onto the floor
Poet's Notes: Born of
a title, born of a passing thought unrelated to verse, born of obligations to
small children, situated in the thrills and frustrations of everyday, where
what happens in the wings to call forth the flashing lights on stage is far
more important and difficult to execute than the light play, but the show is
worth dragging a shopping basket across sun scorched and desolate grocery
aisles for a hundred years because the result is a spark plug.
I enjoyed living into these
images. Kurt Vonnegut in Like Shaking Hands With God said,
"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around." I appreciate his
sentiment and when I'm seventy I hope I still have the opportunity to stand
around post office lines and chat with imperfect strangers. At this moment, I,
against all better judgment and character, often appreciate self-checkout lines
and online retailers.
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