Beer Pairing with Bullshit
The cart barricade shunts us
suspects past the wary checkout lord.
No one sane buys salad at midnight,
so management routes us to chips, beer,
and night-checkout man, tall and fifty.
We of the early morn file through
his glare that roves our
pockets for bulges and
rolls a teacher-poet
into the hoi polloi so that
for a time I do belong here,
for a time I am not marked
by education and station in
this low wage GED town,
my politics temporarily
indistinguishable from the camo-clad
MAGA man who also heads for beer:
comrade of twilight hours,
brother of the empty fridge.
They shelve the Bud and Keystone
an aisle apart from oatmeal stouts
and wittes. I meditate on pairings
for spinach-artichoke dip.
Nothing shouts out privilege
so much as the desire to doff it,
like a handcrafted cap.
My compatriot carries Coors
toward the self-checkout machine
that declines his card; he curses,
night check-out man scowls.
I pay and pass unobserved.
The truth is, I lack
sufficient they to feel
a bona fide we.
The truth is, I moved
to a town that will never forget
I’m from elsewhere.
The truth is, my beer
tastes delicious, and I deserve
dislocation and scorn.