I got my first job at fourteen,
bagging groceries at the Winn-Dixie
on the corner of Sunset and 87th.
It wasn’t poetry,
though there was one old woman in a rusted blue car
with brown water sloshing around the trunk
who always gave me $3 when I carried out her groceries.
That was more than the chap in the Mercedes gave,
and I never forgot it.
Then, in ‘91 we moved to Clearwater, and I transferred
to the store at the corner of McMullen Booth and Enterprise.
I had a crush on the cashier who was a junior and pretty beyond my hopes,
but that didn’t stop me
from buying her ice cream all summer.
One day, there was loud music and a black sports car
driving too fast for the parking lot.
The thing miraculously jerked to a stop
just before hitting the car parked in front of it.
On the bumper was a sticker that said heaven doesn’t want me
and hell’s afraid I’ll take over,
and a man in black got out,
looked at me collecting shopping carts and said
gathering the silver buffalo, eh?
And then he walked away.
And then I saw myself beneath that sun
in my red vest, white shirt, and black tie,
and it all seemed absurd.
I was sixteen looking for sex and poetry
and instead finding Butterball turkeys
to be packed apart from the Drano
(I was, after all, a professional)
and be careful with those eggs, young man(!)
and boy, life doesn’t really care at all,
and it’ll totally suck for you, if you let it.
And I went back inside to the cold, stale air and fluorescent lights
and the manager said someone had dropped a jar of Ragu,
and I looked at this man, old as my father,
in his blue manager’s vest and I said I’ll keep this job
for as long as I need the money to pay for guitar lessons, but,
if I ever need this job for food,
I quit, I quit, I quit.