Michelle Menting

I go to Wal-Mart at midnight and marvel at rows of gum. If it's a Super-store, I place my fingertips on bananas, wonder if processed tofu is redundant and skip past Oprah's picks in book aisle #2. No dead poet follows me, so I don't hear whispers of iambs over the music of spring birds, Spanish guitar, or fat dead tenors streaming from the sound station. Only the spaced beep in the distance from checkout and the girl on register with squid-mark eyebrows, chewing her gum, needing a tissue, wiping her left nostril with her wrist. A Hello Kitty charm dangles there, just like that necklace you slid into my pocket last fall when we wandered through the maze of corn. We stopped somewhere in the middle. All around us, rows of husks and so much quiet. Not even the sound of car horns in the distance.

Posted 08/11/10

First appeared in Double Room 8 (Summer 2009)

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