Customer

The cash register rings agreement beyond
friendship or language. A shrug of a woman
has clearly stopped hoping, as she hates
the curl of her hair, its color, and her places
where the body jiggles anarchic as she walks.
I hope for the best for her, but don’t talk to me,
lady, because I’ve got friends and family
who have screwed lives into little hooks,
throwing problems that attach like velcro.
You, yeah, you, stay unknown. And go.
Sure feels like pure desert here, despite
light fixtures and signs and linoleum,
because we don’t acknowledge each other
as anything more than ghosts behind
the money, and what we’ll trade it for.
Wallets and purses, paper and fingers
asking a machine if the deal’s fairly settled.
A newspaper hovers across the counter,
53 cents, with tax, Armageddon type and
photos of twisty faces, jagged glass—
179 KILLED IN BALI BOMB BLAST.
Tell these dead and their families to go, too.
My eyes reeled it in, and my brain played
the slasher film on a back wall of my skull.
I identified errant shades of black as blood,
body pieces, brick and the pit of human loss.
I would say something happened just then,
although, if you were right behind me,
you’d swear nothing did. The math of it.
10,000 miles. Complete lack of flesh.
All the people who don’t know what to do,
which, I think, is all of us. Events strike,
and resonate. Transaction completed.
Next in line. Next in line. Next. Next.