Footnote
I run into this small grocery for a few odds and ends
to make an excellent soul food feast tonight
(red beans and rice, greens, yeah)—
middle of the week, about 5:30 in the afternoon,
the place actually crowded now
with people mostly just off work,
buying food for their poor meager dinners,
and everyone so glum, beaten down, surly, bored
or just boring—or is it only
my own surly glum and boredom?
Thinking this, I walk past the large blow-up
of an old black-and-white photograph, circa 1930,
hung high on the wall, of a group posed
in typical 3-layered tier in front of a train car,
presumably the long-forgotten, seminal employees
of this currently large chain
—or whoever—
call them former victims of a former age,
all long dead and buried
and hardly mattering a jot,
the same as the rest of us here—
and I suddenly feel somehow
that we are already up there on that wall,
while I also wonder if anyone else around me
is having these thoughts
as they make their way home,
probably for nothing more than to belch and fart
in front of the mind-numbing glow of the television,
until they pass out before getting up tomorrow
to do the whole thing
over again,
never knowing why
as I never know why,
also trying to find the way back home.
And I’m still considering those poor bastards
in that picture, long gone,
now as free
as any American can get,
as I stand waiting in the check-out line,
hoping like hell
that at least some of them
were able to find a little life beyond the servitude
they were born into,
but also knowing that, at this point, I should really be thinking
mostly about myself,
as the cashier hands me my receipt,
that I should be fighting much harder to win something more
than some thin document
that barely proved I was here at all.