Checkout/ poem by Matthew J. Spireng

Sometimes I know the person
in the checkout line
in front of me and sometimes

I don’t. And sometimes if I don’t know
the person in front of me,
I imagine their life, what their house

looks like inside, what they believe
and don’t believe, where
they go when they go on vacation.

And sometimes if I know the person
in front of me
in the checkout line, I imagine

their life, because although I know them,
I don’t know all about them, and
I wonder what they thought of the person

in front of them who left before I
got to the checkout line,
the person they knew or did not know,

the person I might have known or
not known whose life
is surely different from mine.

/////

Matthew J. Spireng’s 2019 Sinclair Poetry Prize-winning book Good Work was published in 2020 by Evening Street Press.  A 12-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he is the author of two other full-length poetry books, What Focus Is and Out of Body, winner of the 2004 Bluestem Poetry Award, and five chapbooks. Website: matthewjspireng.com.