trout

Sentiment

Nick Ascroft

I was slogging around the refrigerator aisle,
While Marcel at home was sunbathing on his fire escape.
Each packet of peas or hash browns was an arm of his
That I fantasized broken. I slung an angry freezerful
Of mangled goods into the trolley,
It was alright for some.

Every superdeal, or couponed special was aggravating.
Marcel would've been whistling unbeknownstly,
Speedreading a biography, whose
Subject's more abject characteristics he would now affect.
There was a woman leaning out over the cheesecakes,
Who I wanted to tip in.

It struck me like an insult after I'd pinched
The checkout dropout with my leanest smile & grunted,
That to beat him I had to not care & I did. Guilt.
Let it rot with the broccoli, I glared
At the bag-stuffer. Marcel, perched like a chicken up
On his windowsill clucking,

Was cause.