National Poetry Month : Carlie Blume,

 

Lonely and a Little Horny at the Grocery Store

 

Am I only just noticing the mechanical boats and cars that line the perimeter?
Starting at produce, ending at meat and fish, might I finally discover a vitamin

or maybe powdered beverage to make me feel like less of a bitch? What is
even the point of making dinner every single night? Can’t we all eat pickles over the sink?

Let’s just pick at the carcass of a congealed roaster chicken until it’s bones weep salty pink.
Self-aware in cement skin, no underwear but still a goddamn queen, for I am patient

I am regale generous with conveyer belt divider; I even thank the liar in front of me
who claims his thundering bag of Anjou’s aren’t organic.

What’s the code for savoy cabbage? Forgot the bags at home. Think I’ll rage scream
at the cashier’s code tome. What’s the difference if I drain my account on greens

and probiotics. Exit doors obey my soul. Farewell artisanal corn brooms. Next time
be sure to suck it.

 

 

 

Carlie Blume was born on the unceded and ancestral lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh (Vancouver). She is a 2017 graduate of Simon Fraser University’s The Writer’s Studio, Betsy Warland’s Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, as well as the Learn Writing Essentials Advanced Poetry Workshop. Her work has appeared in The Maynard, Train: a poetry journal, Ghost City Review and more. Currently she resides on the traditional territories of the Semiahmoo, Katzie and Kwantlen First Nations (Surrey) with her husband and two children.