from Sixty-Four Trips to Vons

Listen to Gabriel Arquilevich read “from Sixty-Four Trips to Vons”:

IX

The parking- lot birds hop between cars
like little dogs with wings looking for treats, 
making less of a call than a twisting scream 
from their metal- tree forest of concrete. 
Perched on a Funyun by my door, one bird 
hammers the snack into pieces and bits,
tilts its throat, then breaks it down again,
a second swooshing in, a third hopping
over to compete. I tap the password
on my phone, slide to video, but get
an alert instead: Radar needs chew sticks
from Pets & More! I must run to the store 
before the gelato unfreezes,
but a child’s in line, pointing at chicks
in the sawdust of an aquarium,
warm and chirping and cute as can be.

XII

Today, Vons was a box in a bad dream,
a bad- box dream, an unreal reality
starring, let’s say, forty- five people
and Club Price stickers and themed
balloons and me, an I moving my dream
cart through, hoping to see someone
I knew enough to ground me when I say
I’m losing my mind in a bad- box dream,
a sense of duty the only thing
keeping me shopping for my wife and son.
I need help. I want the rest that death
will bring, but I don’t want to kill myself 
except sometimes I do. Medication?
Could be. I’ll call my doctor when I’m clear
of this checkout- line hallucination,
outside the store but still inside the dream.

XIV

I spin the handle for a gumball, grape 
hopefully, then my son pulls my jeans:
he wants fifty cents for a Homie,
a street figure in a plastic bubble,
but I don’t have the change. Once we’ve crossed 
all the items on the list off the list,
I promise him the Homie will be his,
and then a clipboard man petitions me
for a signature I don’t give despite
the ethos. He’s like the solar guy
showing me my home from Google Earth 
from my home at dinnertime. I told them 
both to leave some info and go! My son
and I have our own mission: shop the list 
down, get the change, secure a Homie,
and try once more for the grape gumball.

XVI

Taco Works chips and guacamole:
the task is simple, then for some reason
it goes all, like, you know, existential:
Vons without is Vons within, matrix- y,
a box of time in time, the happenings
all the unchanging same, like a board game 
the pieces don’t know they’re pieces in 
and no one ever wins, or a snow globe 
shaken but still one place with no escape: 
the deli line, the Coinstar machine,
the Queen of England on the magazine, 
and me. I want to scream. I want to run 
away. Both happen, one silently.
I get to the car empty- handed.
My wife asks me to explain, but kissing 
Radar won’t have it, and I’m too afraid.

XVII

A coupon is under contention
and the line stalls as the cashier calls
for backup. Standing around commences. 
Two huffs from a couple behind me
but I’m all right. Honestly, I don’t mind: 
I park it, I mean my mind, then shift
to full observation mode, the nature
of thought on full display. Take item A: 
basket in hand, a heavy man in black 
shorts and flip- flops too small for his feet 
on this cold day. Conclusions about him 
are conclusions about my need to 
conclude something about everyone
and everything, especially me.
It’s exhausting. Torture when you think 
about it. Can we ever be free?

Read more from Issue 22.2.