Alexander Stachniak

The Medulla Review

ALEXANDER STACHNIAK

Another Bag of Fruit

It's a simple transaction, really, they just stand there,
smiling like Gordon Brown or grimacing like they run the UK,
when all they've got is a bag of fruit and clotted cream
and very little in the way of thoughts other than a
general wondering whether the green vest that hangs
around my shoulders means that I'm up for sale, or
whether it means I'm gifted enough to work the stationary
laser that sits at the end of the automatic conveyor belt.

Sometimes it's a man, and sometimes it's a woman, but
the lack of variety is always evident, so sometimes I call
to them, to ease the boredom, are you waiting for Godot?,
he's not coming, and then sometimes they give in and
pretend they no longer feel the elephant-sized fish that's
swimming between us in the room.

When the items start motoring down the 3-foot tarmac,
they distract their eyes with same great taste candy and
celeb news and weight-loss tips, like frequent fliers reading
SkyMall instead of watching the wings shake and listening
to the pocks in the holey windows go from whisper to whine,
and unless I'm offering alcohol, I might as well be preaching
next to Cicero with a mouth full of pebbles, because none
of them glance at the name-tag I wear like a desperate tattoo,
creeping past the edges of my sleeves and announcing
the presence of something decidedly more enigmatic
than a bunny living in a sullied magician's hat, something
decidedly more troubling than the first forays in biology
and the fifth dead rabbit before holes were deemed necessary
for the well-being of the audience.

By the time the register spits out the magic word, my nostrils
have swelled to melons, my mouth's at least as wide as
Edvard Munch's; I've got a rip down my middle that the
customer helps me fill with plastic bags of anonymity before
following their cart out the door, but there's a gap: a leak
in my holes, a double negative that tells me that next time
this rabbit will induce asphyxia, next time I will gesture to the
store, do you think these are really shelves, then get in close,
or the ribs of the white whale?

Bio: Alexander Stachniak’s poetry has recently been published or is forthcoming in FutureCycle Poetry, The Driftwood Review, and The Journal of Truth and Consequence. He is the 2009 recipient of the Ernest Sandeen Poetry Award.

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