It's Still Life

A Book Called Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket
            …. assuming that the woman’s name is Rita

She might’ve been a Rita,
or a Rhoda, but for certain
her name began with an R.
She wore a gold necklace
with an R around her neck.
Perhaps she’s called Raisin.

Raisin, truly an albatross around ones neck, but if you can name a girl Apple, then surely you can name a child after a dried-up, wrinkly grape.

And she’s standing over
the meat counter, looking
at the beef, stacks of steak,

the minced and ground,
and she’s weaving and
wobbling, bobbing as if
she has sea legs, and

there she goes leaning
a little forward, and then
a little more, and I’m
thinking vertigo, so I say,

“Are you okay, luv?” and she gives me a look – one eyebrow arched into an expression I can’t quite decipher, and she says, Do I look okay?”

And I don’t know: is that
rhetorical. Does she usually
look like a camel’s hump.

And then she starts clawing
at the steak, pawing it aside
and growling like a mad dog,

“It’s the beef. It’s the beef. Cows and cows and cows. Cows farting and fornicating and killing the earth.”

I stepped back – Security arrived.
Two muscle-bound beefy men.
We looked at each other, exchanged
a one eyebrow arch, and I said,

“I think her name is Rita.”

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Written for GoDogGo Café. A Book called “Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket” – Constraint: The title of a book is included in the title or the body of your poem. ©Misky 2022. Shared with #amwriting #apoemaday #GoDOGGoCafe  #GreatReadsPromptChallenge on Twitter. Image: Waking Up by Stanley Spencer 1950 (fairuse)