Supermarket Visions of Hell

JEAN HACKETT

March 25, 2020

Grim go the shoppers to the grocery store,

small apartment people locked down in big towns

who broke out in bawdy song

balanced on balconies the night before.

Today they cue Soviet style in bread lines,

clustering, twisting themselves like mutant RNA

around the block to wait patiently (or not)

for whatever is in store.

Apples, peaches, pears, and plums, 

limit 1 bag per customer per trip.

No more blueberry muffins,

the bakery department shut down yesterday.

3 raspberry parfaits and a double Dutch chocolate cake

sit like abandoned puppies in a lone open cooler,

await adoption.

JEAN HACKETT lives and writes in the San Antonio and the Texas Hill Country.  Her work has been most recently published in Voices de la Luna, The San Antonio Express News, and The Houston Chronicle.  One of her poems has been selected to appear on San Antonio’s VIA buses during National Poetry Month.