after John Updike and Joyce Carol Oates
The checking-you-out clerk at the grocery store
thought of you as Queenie. Impressed that you
wore nothing but a nubbly swimsuit with the straps down,
Sammy wanted to be with you, be yours,
stride down an aisle of peaches barefoot beside you,
rip off his bow tie and apron and escort you
to an outdoor cocktail party of limitless possibilities.
Out the door, squealing with your two girlfriends,
you mimicked the store manager who told you
“girls, this isn’t the beach” all the while imagining
how this scene would play in a movie starring yourself.
The soundtrack: dreamy Supremes, Mamas and Papas,
maybe Monkees or Troggs. You wish you had stolen
that jar of creamy pickled fish, driven off in a T-bird
convertible, your sun-bleached hair streaming.
But, oh, Connie, Connie, the Top 40 let you down.
Your never-there father, your too-perfect sister,
even your mother who cared enough to fight with you
and be jealous of her younger self she saw in you,
left you with only a screen door and a dial tone
to keep the lurid charisma of Arnold from prying you
out the door. You yearned to test your beauty;
he, his power to destroy beauty.
Whenever Sammy thought of you,
you were never dismembered in a field,
but always the prom queen, too good for him
and out of reach. He used the memory of you
against other women in his life.
You never knew he quit his job for you,
turned into Samuel or Sam, and his whole life,
married or divorced, went home after work
to a nervous TV and canned beer.
Only an electronic eye witnessed
your victory as you took change
from the smitten clerk
the day doors sprang apart for you,
the Queen of the A & P.
First published in Carve Magazine
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