The Overnights

I.

One-hundred and sixty-four lights flicker, 
		half off and half stumbling.
This suburbia has killed all the insects waiting for us, 
except for the fleas that 
														leap away from 
my grasp towards freedom.
No natural sounds, no chirping or croaking, 
				only cars speeding past, idling engines, and garbage compactors.
Sometimes it rains, if we’re lucky.
Toiling under the sound of the broken PA,
		This aisle smells of molten plastic and acetone
		and this one tries to pretend it is the Dover Cliffs
		while the adjacent aisle has spilled its chemicals and burned an outline of 
		some more well-adjusted future into the tile floors.
		Another, let us not forget, permeates the whole store with the smell of frost.
		
		Aisle 4 is a stationary predator.
		It lures prey in with enticing addiction,
		the alcohol spillage sticks up the whole floor,
		black bootprints on white floor serve as sad eulogy for the fallen.

		The only sound here is 
				waving
		rattling
						twisting
		undulations 
		of refrigerator walls
		and the				 BEEP BEEP BEEP
		locking alarms that keep us ‘till dawn.

We stock product. We throw freight. We clean the store.
No one knows our names
and we barely know each other.


II.

A croak, a croak, a croak
		pierces our box.
Tonight, the exit door is stuck,
and a greater chill haunts us all night.
		The manager’s cart barricade keeps out the transients
		and keeps us in.
But all emerge to the croaking melody, and the arhythmic
yowls that interrupt it.
A frog, the color of trail dust,
squats behind the barricade,
eyes fixed on us. 
It stares.
It stirs.
It stumbles.
It stops. 
		One of us approaches,
the others 		follow. 
We all watch it, and it watches back.
All involved brought together 
by a sense of nowhere and a 
pace of none. 
				A hand reaches out. 
Coax it inside,
see what it does.
														From away, the razor scraper whips.
the frog, skewered, screeches and writhes, 
desperate for escape.
It screams.
It folds.
It crumples.
It stops.
		The manager deposits it into the ash bin,
"That was a close one."
Our orders are clear,
and to work we return. 


III.

We stock product and throw freight and clean the store.
We remember the croak, the yowl, the screech, 
that dust-colored frog.
We think about tomorrow and being far from here.
		Our own world						out there 						away from 
the damagers and the skewerers.

That will be tomorrow, or the day after, or after or after or after.
Maybe even yesterday.