Lay for the Day 4th June

1937: the Humpty Dumpty Supermarket in Oklahoma City introduces the world’s first shopping trolleys.

A section from

Eye City

In Sainsbury’s sleepwalkers sail, trundle, dally
Trolleys in the aisles, while household ills and goods
Snatch multi-family-size-pack fingers
To empty pockets’ sockets
To the sleeptalker’s tune of the scanning tills
Eyelessly telling us, one by one,
Ingredients of dreams
They have of their Next Customer Please.

I mingle from meat to biscuits,
Seeking my Mis-shapes and Part Rashers, my Rich Teas,
Singing under my breath and my eyebrows,
Are you here O my Self-Raising Flour?

John Gibbens
from Eye City

The Lay Reader: an archive of the poetic calendar