A Poem for Groceries

This afternoon, I write my grocery list
on the back of a poem
in an airport terminal: coffee, spinach, veggies.
I put “fish,” in parentheses and a question
mark after “tortillas,”
unable to remember if there are any
leftover
from the last time I was craving tacos.

You tell me
my life is romantic–
writing here
on the back of beloved penmanship.
But tonight,
I will eat ground beef,
alone
on my couch.

Between the lines
I can see,
faded,
through the white,
while pushing my cart through Harris Teeter,
Wallace Stevens musing away:
“The reader became the book; and
summer night; // Was like the conscious being…”
And I wonder if you are
what you read, are you also what you eat?
I wonder,
if I am a tortilla question mark, and
if you are a parenthetical salmon fillet.

Anyway, I have always liked
the flexibility
of unusual punctuation marks.
So universally confusing, so ambiguous–
like the elegance
of my lonely meal.

Tagged as: poetry, Wallace Stevens, Writing