Beatnik Summer

I parked the rod in a spot, “Ice station zebra” we call it.

Out in the middle of no where in one of the first biggest parking lots around.

Sitting in the car with every window down, wishing I could roll them further, all the way to the blacktop. 

It’s a hot bitch out there.

I slid off the red vinyl before that door came back to haunt me.

Fast as a horn handled jackknife, I was quick.

Pammy from my neighborhood walked near her mother. They were on their way in, so I tried on behind them. That little girl was a knock-kneed fawn trapped inside a woman’s body. Only last summer braces ruined that face, now the pecker wreckers were gone and I’d love to ruin mine inside her.

The lucky supermarket swallowed every last drop of her with its sudden electric doors.

I fingered pitted chrome and wrestled my cart from the hold of all the others. I rushed inside to the teeth of the grocery.

Now, what did I come for?

There was a shaky guy behind his wife who ran their world. I could tell she hounded him from the bar before they came.

My nipples tweaked in that air conditioned air and I was reminded to look around because I knew what the girls were capable of.

Heads of cabbage were on sale. “Cukes” were .25 for four and looking at a hunk of blue-cheese just made me drool, drip right between the nipples, just before I missed it. My boots clunked on the linoleum they polished religiously, snakeskin over that sickening shiny swirl. Man, there was no better place to go, when there was no better place to be. These poor employee bastards with their bow-ties trying hard not to be seen, were unaware they were on display in a place that made it famous.

Display was what it was all about here in the modern era of 1963. In here, you’d even think we’d land on the moon.

I stopped there and pondered that thought I’d just had. Because it was “super” it wasn’t just a market. It was all getting bigger like the lot was outside, and Pammy from my neighborhood, was leaving all small behind.

That was the new ideal, and that was how it fit. I followed my chrome cart, still empty, but looking.

It was all starting to rain down inside the show behind my eyes. I get it, I get it, I said to myself inside. It’s all supposed to get bigger, faster, prettier, hotter, tastier, brighter, sexier.

Until.

The cart stays empty, that’s what I came here for.

GJH 11