Safeway

It doesn’t take an aeronautical engineer
to feel pure joy when Jack the Polish pilot
lifts the nose of the Cessna 208 Caravan
off the Serengeti grass. Then, passing
the peak of Kilimanjaro in the air. We

learned to pee in a bottle while kneeling.
We watched a lion circle a lioness until
she roared. We visited houses where more
goats than people lived. And now here
comes my neighbor in the produce

aisle. She’s squeezing avocados like little
breasts. Her cart is full of Entenmenn’s.
While I was gone she got braces so when
she smiles I can’t stop staring at the jumble
of metal, even though I’m pinching myself:

Look her in the eye. Look her in the eye.

Author of the article

Patricia Colleen Murphy teaches creative writing at Arizona State University where she is the founding editor of Superstition Review. Her writing has appeared in many magazines including Calyx, The Massachusetts Review, New Orleans Review, Seattle Review, Cimarron Review, Kalliope, Quarterly West, American Poetry Review, Green Mountains Review, Indiana Review, and The Iowa Review. Her poems have received awards from The Madison Review, The Bellevue Literary Review, Gulf Coast, and others. She runs LitMagLunch.com where she writes reviews of Lunches and Literary Magazines.