Saturday, December 12, 2015

AND I LEFT TRADER JOE'S WITH NO GROCERIES

Desperately seeking an immediate antidote
to relieve this sudden noxious fever,

a serious bout of sickening confusion
spiked with a sweaty vertigo at the oncoming awareness

of so many enigmatic and far-flung cultures,
raw lands of sticky green junglesnarled hills

and steamtopped mountain summits
colliding here in this climate-controlled moment

with a dark and indolent December-in-Chicago,
from these bunches of gaseous yellowing

bananas hanging next to slick plastic cans
of greasy coffee beans from Peru, to those

deep pink hibiscus flower two-dimensional caricatures
fetishized perfectly into corporate logos—

I fervidly began chanting,
quietly but discernibly out-loud to myself,

some of the coldest
words that I know

in order to hopefully
quell the delirium.

And those words
were these,

and in this particular order—
grave.

lone.
winter.

stone.
and last,

but not least of all—
silence.