Tidy.
Tidy and colorful.
Everything's designed to grab your attention
Like the way a computer monitor flickers
In your peripheral vision.
And the hair raises on the back of your neck
As if you're being watched
You realize it's hundreds of little faces
Sports heroes and movie stars and such -
Feces on boxes and cans
Aisles and aisles of orphans
That just
Want
To
Go
Home
With you.
You find yourself unable to move
In the frozen food aisle.
Contemplating the faces
On the Blue Bell Ice Cream treat boxes.
Who are these people?
The girl playing dress-up
The female postal-worker
The jughead in the straw hat
The fat-faced little-league coach
No names to the faces, but as unconsciously familiar
As the trumps of a Tarot deck.
You must have been staring a long time,
because you look up and
You
Forgot
Just
How
Big
The store is.
Suddenly a bird lands at your feet -
At first you think you imagined it
But then you realize it's real
And you can't stop laughing.
And your mind is sent into the future
After you and your fellow shoppers are dead
And the cavernous space above is dense with
Branches, vines, and nesting animals
Wild dogs will prowl the check-out lanes
The stockroom will host a den of bears
And this bird's children will glide down
From a forgotten air-duct.
And all the supermarkets will then be the forests.
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