Arsenic Lobster poetry journal
Issue Twenty-one
Winter 2009
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Thrift
John Thomas

The fluorescent bulb was invented
to impose a speed limit on the soul.
Buzzkill slurped through a glass straw,
then sealed at both ends and fed
to the grid. They depend over the aisles,
wearing out the denim and polyester
with radioactive light, baking DMV déjà vu
and church basement hallucinations
into the bargain hunters below.
And the entire city is a size large
or larger. Tears in the fabric, buttons
that have walked out on the rest
of the family. The unaccountable stains.
Half a dozen languages converging
on the kitchen wares, but unity is hard
to come by when rummaging through
someone else’s trash. Still we persist
because not having a match can be
embarrassing when company comes over.
College students seizing upon tacky lamps
and highly flammable furniture, anything
minted in the 70s. All that misguided energy
become commodity, prized for its failure.
Like the larger than large woman
joysticking her electric cart by the troughs
of records in mildewed sleeves.
Her condition makes everyone else’s less so.
This is the encouragement we need
to strain the last nubbin of value
out of the tube. When we’ll be ready
to exchange what isn’t there
for what will do.

About John Thomas

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