10 items or less

The woman who grabs my cans has less bling on than anyone else, but because it’s Steeler Sunday, I keep ducking my head below the flower lei, the black and gold banner that says Yinz R in Stiller Country.

Oatmeal pies are on sale, and she says she likes these kind too, but stops to ask me why I’m not wearing Steelers

And What’s my problem, as if I’ve just rejected some birth rite and she’s not wrong. But I’m not here to take over her Black and Gold planet

I’m just here for a few unbroken eggs, one pound of chipped ham.

and a receipt but there’s this soccer mom in a Polamalu jersey

swearing at her kid to put down that phone and help her shove nacho bags and cartons of cigs up the ramp to get scanned.

Everyone here is either panic stricken or frozen to the screams of kick offs, staticky loud speakers crackling with stats instead of price checks, which way the wind is blowing, and I almost get it. I almost envy the bliss of forgetting the job, the rust hole in the muffler

the unmowed yard to be a part of something I’ll never be.

I can tell by just by looking that everyone here has to work tomorrow.

the Polumalu mom, that young kid with the HVAC work shirt on

Everyone in ten items or less taking their hats off for the anthem, just waiting for something to happen.

Robert Walicki’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in a number of journals, including Vox Populi and The Kentucky Review. A Pushcart Award nominee, his most recent chapbook, “The Almost Sound of Snow Falling” (Night Ballet Press, 2015), was nominated for the 2016 New York Showcase of Books.