Christine Jones
At Stop & Shop after the Inauguration
I’m wandering
the aisles of spices
and cereals, bumping
into the free-standing display
of the now fruitier Fruit Loops.
I meander,
finger each bottle,
each cardboard box.
I shake, debate
every priced ounce,
for no reason
other than to linger.
Gripping the cart’s cracked plastic
steadies me as I shuffle
past neon colored cans of cat food,
thirteen different brands of pickles,
and umpteen flavors of potato chips.
On the magazine rack,
Women’s World pushes against
today’s headlines, then
my red grapes rolling
on the conveyor belt,
the tenderloin, the carton
of organic blueberries, scanned
by a sixteen year old named Lily.
Remember how we argued
over Dylan’s prize, legalizing
marijuana, or whether chickens
should be free to roam?
I want you to know
it’s cold outside, and I resist,
a bag of groceries in each fist,
before succumbing
to those automatic
whale-mouthed doors.
Christine Jones is a graduate of Lesley University’s MFA program, working on her first book collection with mentor, poet Erin Belieu, and is founder/editor of poems2go, a public poetry project funded by The Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry. Her poetry has appeared in The Offering, Kindred, Muse, The Literary Bohemian, and is forthcoming in The Timberline Review.
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