A while back (September 28, 2011), I wrote a
rambling reader response to a (then) forthcoming novel by Mark Wisniewski, called
Show Up, Look Good. Great title! (I was trying to be a little like the book's narrator in the way I wrote, but I was also my usual randomly rambling self.) Anyhoo, an incident in the book stuck with me, a cashier hoping to retrieve for herself a vintage dime that came her way in the checkout line.
It turned up in this poem,
"Grocery Store at Night," published July 31 in
Referential Magazine, while I was away in Pure Michigan. I love
Referential. Each poem "refers" to another: my grocery store/vintage dime refers not just to the novel but to the phrase "little actual money" in the poem
"Soon" by Helen Losse, and so on. Each time I visit
Referential, I get pulled in to all the connections. What a wonderful reading experience. So I am extra glad to be a part of it now in this way! Not only as reader but as a contributor.
And I do always like the grocery store at night. I've been there for the buffer, and I've been there for the 1% milk!
If you love dogs, and if you love poems, please visit the latest poetry feature at
Escape Into Life, called
Dog Days. All the poems have dogs in them! And one of the paintings has a dog in it. The paintings are by
Kate Pugsley, who has the perfect name.
5 comments:
Hi Kathleen,
Read your grocery store poem and loved it, esp the part with the vintage dime.
Thanks, Sarah!
Oh, I can see her lifting the change tray. We have a library patron who wants to search the quarters whenever he pays a fine, looking for a new state.
Oh, but now I want to write a poem referential to yours, about how I came up with my jar full of wheatback pennies!
Do it! Submit it!
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