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Poetry

Piggly Wiggly Mama

By Sean Johnson

I see you by the snack cakes, aisle nine,
opposite “Chips and Dip, Saltines.” I fill
my shopping cart with TV dinners, steals
at 90 cents. The woman next in line
is fishing coupons from her purse as you
walk through the aisles of the grocery store
as if this were an art, a model for
some European line, cat-walking through
the produce now (surveillance mirrors tell all).
You fondle melons, checking peaches, pears,
as music, soft, plays overhead—“I Fall
In Love Too Easily.” It’s true. I stare
for hours, it seems, a boy hearing a call
beyond the plums, beyond the daily fare.