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General Store After Hours 

We scale the side of a shopping cart and sit, weave

our fingers through the metal bars as Craig pushes

us up and down deserted aisles. Aisles of blurred

cereal boxes, candy bars, chip bags, Coke bottles.

The wheels of the cart quiver atop warped floor

boards, fluorescent bulbs hum overhead and their

yellowed light flickers off the metal bars of our

temporary cage. Cage with wheels that turn and turn

and turn as we race down the center aisle toward

the meat counter, our father standing behind the display

of beef, cheese, chicken, fish, lamb, pork, turkey,

smiling, his white apron streaked and spattered with blood.

 Joseph

I saw him last night, the first time in nearly

twenty years, at a nursing home, propped up

in a plush chair, somehow still seventy something.

His hair white, but veined with silver, a stack

of wrinkles on his forehead, white, unruly eyebrows

hidden behind dark rimmed glasses, his mouth

agape. I introduced him to my wife, Rachael, he shook

her hand and said, I had a lot of friends in his diluted

Scottish accent, then stared out the window as if I

was just an acquaintance, which I was, as he died

nearly twenty years ago, when I was just eight,

when he was too old to be a friend of mine.