Buy One Egg McMuffin Get One Free
Douglas Drive, Crystal Minnesota
Every cracked sign has the sirens’ lure.
We clean cars better than the rest,
repair vacuums, examine eyes.
There are free X-rays for new dental patients,
all-you-can eat shrimp Thursdays at
the boiling seafood Cajun kitchen.
No McFibs, just real ribs at Arby’s
and bargain cremations at Washburn McCreavy’s.
Put a quarter in the shopping cart at Aldi,
gather fresh produce and meat,
house-brand snacks and cheap cheddar cheese.
This ecosystem of minimum-wage workers,
these canned beans, rice, and pasta will feed me for days.
But the Target superstore oversees all,
its red dot a plastic knowing, omnipotent eye—
rusted cars darting in and out
of the kinetic concrete hive.
*
Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, look for her work in Rust and Moth, The Eunoia Review, The Rat’s Ass Review, New York Quarterly, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press) and Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press).
