I don’t know about those other district managers,

polished dress shoes, ironed blouses, shelf-stripe neckties,

but I’d change nothing about this convenience store

leaning at dusk at this small town’s elbows.

The sliding doors are stuck open, the entrance

tattered with face-down price signs dusted with footprints.

The chip bags glint with wrinkles and hangover postures,

the cereal aisle a mouthful of crooked teeth.

Canned goods shuffle in uneven queue lines,

and piles of candy-filled hanging bags litter bottom shelves.

The apparel aisle is post-natural disaster,

deflated bodies strewn with careless limbs.

Empty pusher shelves at the over-the-counter medicine

look like dead pixels on a colorful screen.

In frozen foods, glass doors are hand-printed and blurry,

bags and boxes strewn and ransacked.

Somehow, I find a bag of pretzel bites, untagged,

still hiding in a rough-edged cardboard box on the shelf.

I can only find five cold beers in the entire store

but tonight, when I’m finally home with you,

there’ll only be three.