Scott W. Alten
The Toaster Baby
(an echo of James Dickey’s “The Sheep Child”)
Appliance salesmen frantic to fornicate
with everything with soft down pillows
with porcelain vases high
heel shoes will avoid the
appliances through tales of their own
make, model and design
Saying I heard about
this dude working in a Jamesway
found hidden in the back
this thing that’s only half
toaster like a shiny infant
stuck on the discount rack because
those things don’t sell it has
a browning button but you know it’s broken
this guy’s brother told me . . .
But this all gets, pretty much,
forgotten. The salesman have taken
their rightful place in management.
The toasters are safe in their department,
appliances but we senior salesmen
still are curious about that
Jamesway discount appliance shelf.
Perhaps hidden within bad inventory?
Merely with it’s knobs, the toaster baby may
be saying saying
I am here in my father’s store
I who am half of your world, came electrically
to my mother on the top shelf
of the appliances where she sat like nobility,
waiting to be purchased. It was unbridled lust
from a flesh and blood world that took her
from behind, and she turned on, without plugging
in, without switching on, giving her best
self to that inane need. Upon finishing she remained
motionless on the shelf, and in a sound of guilt
and humiliation of something bleeding
profusely, she started, as she had to,
to manufacture me. I awoke malfunctioning,
In the track lighting of the store, with my eyes
more silver than human. I saw for a neon moment
the great department store from both sides.
Salesmen and product in the round of their need,
And the air conditioning chilled my hull,
My hand clasped my handle/
I consumed my one meal
of electric milk and broke down
staring. From the appliance section I was switched
to the discount shelf, where the dust
is removed weekly by a Spanish woman
and nobody buys anything. Piled back in a corner
next to a cracked television
I see the cash register eye
to eye, but I fail to pass it by.
Broken, I am most assuredly functional
In the minds of salesmen: I am it that drives
them like welfare mothers from the full priced items
and the virginal mineral water.
They go into lawn-care into toys and hobbies they go
deep into their known sales pitch. With me in mind,
they lie they wait the make commissions.
They marry check out girls they raise their own kind.
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