Here's a poem called "The Star Market."
There really was a Star Market, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Anybody know that?
Alison?
You remember.
You remember that Star Market?
Porter Square.
"The Star Market."
The people Jesus loved were shopping at the Star Market
yesterday.
An old, light-colored man standing next to me
at the checkout breathed so heavily,
I had to step back a few steps.
Even after his bags were packed, he still
stood, breathing hard, and hawking into his hand.
The feeble, the lame, I could hardly look at them.
Shuffling through the aisles, they smelled of decay,
as if the Star Market had declared a day off
for the able-bodied, and I had wandered
in with the rest of them.
Sour milk, bad meat, looking for cereal and spring water.
Jesus must have been a saint, I said to myself.
Looking for my lost car in the parking lot
later, stumbling among the people, who
would have been lowered into rooms by ropes, who would have
crept out of caves, or crawled from the corners
of public baths, on their hands and knees, begging for mercy.
If I touch only the hem of his garment,
one woman thought, could I bear the look on his face
when he wheels around?