Child in the thick of yearning. Doll carted and pushed like child. The aisles purport opportunities — looking up, the women's chins, the straight rows of peas and pretzels, Fizzies' foils, hermetic boxes no one knows. I'll get it! What thing therein — bendy straws, powder blue pack Blackjack gum — will this child fix upon? On TV, women with grocery carts careen down aisles to find expensive stuff. Mostly, this means meat. This, then, is a life. This, a life that's woven wrong and, woven once, disbraided, sits like Halloween before a child, disguised in its red Santa suit, making its lap loom the poppy field Dorothy wants to bed. Can I have and the song's begun. O world spotted through more frugal legs. O world.
From Ledger by Susan Wheeler. Copyright © 2005 by Susan Wheeler. Reprinted with permission of the University of Iowa Press. All rights reserved.