At many grocery stores, the checkout girls now sit behind a shield of clear acrylic. In Aisle 13B, there is non-brand toilet paper, but you are limited to one 10-roll pack only. Every few rows there's a stand with a large bottle of hand sanitizer, but it's heartbreaking to see they still keep lobsters in tanks, their large crusher claws bound close to their heads with broad rubber bands, their walking legs weakly paddling water. Who of us will be spared, will pare away the extra letters to get to the spar, which the dictionary describes as the main longitudinal beam of an airplane wing? Sticks of celery are green as grasshopper bodies. Every now and then a person jumps when someone is about to come too close. In their baskets, loaves of bread are breathing.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.