From Trader Joe’s to at least 30,000 feet!

He was a handsome young artist, good face at the cash register,

but his expression was like the black and white screen 

still playing summer sitcom reruns from the 60s in an apartment 

complex behind the dumpsters of the empty Holiday Inn

miles from anything in the middle of Kansas and nobody on holiday.

( But hang on, this isn't over. )

The way you knew he was an artist was the faded-out haystack 

yellow T-shirt that said VAN GOGH on the front 

Fuck Thomas Kinkade on the back, 

and the other way I knew he was an artist was how he packed 

my grocery bag; blueberries and meat in juicy Rothko layers. 

He looked up and I looked right at him, 

young blue eyes meeting old blue eyes 

blissing out all the women in line so I said, 

I can see you’re an artist by the way you bag it all up. 

The composition of fruits and meats and sugar treats, 

all that wine and cheese straight off to the vanishing point. 

We could all see how my saying this affected him. 

He needed to hear it, I needed to say it, we both needed to believe it. 

(I had that job once, but at a Safeway, nothing happening. Yet.) 

He brightened up and lightened up, got straight up, sky-high!

Not drugged-out high, but drug-up high, way up there

riding one of those ridiculously high, fluffy clouds

way up HIGH, free and FLUFFY Ansel Adams clouds,

Ansel Adams along as his wingman, 

Georgia O’Keeffe was there too, their wingwoman! 

I’m not on the payroll, but 

everything happens at Trader Joe’s.