Gift Card
I’m getting into my car at Starbucks
when a man appears out of somewhere. Says
he needs to go to Evansville (where I’m going),
ten miles away from where we are. “Sorry,
I can’t take you,” I say with cowardly shame.
“I’m not asking you to take me,” he says.
And with the flash of a $25 Schnucks gift card,
he says he doesn’t need groceries,
he needs a ride, and he’ll pay for it
with the twenty-five dollars I should give to him.
“You can understand why I might be suspicious,” I say.
Flipping the card, he says, “Call this number.
You’ll see. What do you take me for anyway?”
Though I’m more inclined to believe he is taking me,
I hand him a twenty and five ones.
I’ve been hacked on Facebook at least three times.
My wife’s health insurance was billed five thousand
seven hundred dollars by a provider who hadn’t provided.
Spam Risk always calls when I’m eating.
“You owe me an apology,” he says. “You’ll see.”
Four days have passed. I haven’t called the number.
I haven’t gone to Schnucks. The card, still in my car
beside the gear shift, stares up at me as if
asking me to think the best of people.
I think I’ll leave it in my car a few more days.
*
Mark Williams’s poems have appeared in ONE ART, The Southern Review, Rattle, Nimrod, New Ohio Review, and other journals. Kelsay Books published his collection, Carrying On, in 2022. His fiction is forthcoming in BULL, Gargoyle, The Main Street Rag, and Valparaiso Fiction Review. He lives in Evansville, Indiana.
Oh, my. There is something insanely pleasing about this poem —not just the true at the end but the whole ride!
Beautiful poem and I am partial ( some what) to narratives and simple lines.