The Shopper, in her long struggle to return home, is confronted by shampoo choices, while the Hair limp and lusterless, never opens her mouth. It’s for the Shopper to push past the hunched over woman, the obstructive cart, decide which bestows the most beauty for the cost. Her brain begins frothing, she begins rinsing it off. She steps through the sunless rows, tiny canyons of deceptive wind that buffet from every ingenious direction. She is forgetting, becoming a child that day dreams of the post-shopping quarter in her palm, the round crunch of appeasement sugar. Asparagus, she whispers, leaning deeply into her cart, let’s blow this crazy joint. The celery has started weeping. She’s retracing her steps again, searching for that last elusive item, it’s secret aisle. /////////////
Carol Graser’s work has been published or is forthcoming in many journals, including Apricity Magazine, The Berkeley Poetry Review, Midwest Quarterly, I-70 Review, The MacGuffin, Midwifery Today, Souther Poetry Review, and Home Planet News. Her collection, The Wild Twist of Their Stems, was published by Foothills Publishing in 2007. Since 2003, she’s run the monthly poetry series at the legendary Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, NY. She has performed her work at various events and venues around new York State.
Lightwood 