Jessy Assy

Because you can’t keep everything,

only some things

you choose to keep.

Shoplifting includes other goods-

undamaged,

untouched,

pristine;

thoughts of coins

clandestinely diving

sequentially;

capitalist pebbles

drippity-droppingly

free falling at zero gravity

into the cashier’s hand-

as barters, unions, and markets

merge with spendings, earnings, and other

cyclicalities that render the

nature of this arrangement

possible;

a comradery-

fatal commitment

to non-commitment

wearing down the

contract

predecessors once trodded upon

years ago, on that yellow brick road.

I begin pondering how I have never once loved

because I could,

but only because I could not,

and grab our conspiratorial eggplants,

marxist mangos,

imperial broccolis,

and sympathetically, soft, small, supple grapes,

then proceed to walk out of the produce store.

You won’t ask me to.