Poetry

(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.