TO WAL-MART
Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon,
With the old Moon in her arms;
And I fear, I fear, my Master dear!
We shall have a deadly storm.
(Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence)
The twist-ties at Wal-Mart are black.
I remarked upon this last night,
while completing a round
of prosaic, late-night shopping
on the way home from an orchestra rehearsal,
and I thought to myself that maybe
it's a clever marketing ploy
spawned by the corporate executives
to trick the rest of us into thinking
that they have a sense of style
by throwing us in for a loop
with such an unprecedented maneuver.
Back in the nineties, they would have had a shot
at being considered "goth," but now,
they're just plain "emo."
The twist-ties at Wal-Mart are black.
I fingered a few while packing up
my token selections from the produce department—
five pears, three tangerines, in essence
whatever happened to be on sale that day.
The aisles opened up before me,
one after another, in all of their USDA-certified goodness
until I resolved to forgo the strawberries
this time around, remembering that
we already had some at home.
I envisioned them sitting there on our kitchen counter,
huddled together within their confines
of a clear, plastic box.
The twist-ties at Wal-Mart are black.
As I meandered over to the front checkout,
I wondered if they were black at every Wal-Mart location
all across the US or whether this was something
that made the one in Streetsboro, Ohio,
so very different
from all the rest.
The voice of God came in over the loudspeaker.
"Attention shoppers. The time is now
ten to midnight, and the cash registers will close
in five minutes for a brief balance check.
They will reopen promptly for your twenty-four hour
shopping convenience."
Wal-Mart never sleeps.
Ever vigilant, it monitors the continuous flood of people
crossing the threshold of its sliding glass doors,
drawn in by the promise of the lowest prices around,
a living testament to the functionality
of a free-market economy as epitomized
by this sterling example of a pan-American caucus
where supply meets demand.
In the end, our wallets vote,
and the platform of Wal-Mart Incorporated
says "so far, so good."
The voice of God came in again,
but I let it trail off from my consciousness.
I pulled up to the conveyor belt
at one of the checkouts
and began to unload.
The clerk at the cash register
had had his youth mauled by Vietnam.
He didn't mention this, but I could see it
written into his face.
Maybe he'd fought there himself,
or maybe one of his buddies came back
in a body bag.
Regardless, nothing much mattered to him anymore,
so when I handed him a package
of purportedly organic lunch meat,
he obligingly scanned the bar code
and passed it off to be packed,
along with the remainder of my
indisputably bargain deals.
I eyed the tattoos on his forearms
and managed in passing to discern
a heart, a dagger, and a faded ribbon
upon which was etched the word "Kim."
The bend in his back spoke of someone
who was not used to not being
young anymore.
I imagined how we had both crossed the threshold
of those sliding glass doors earlier on that day
to pledge our allegiance to corporate America,
ensuring that it would continue to stand:
one retailer, indivisible, with yellow smiley faces
and equal prices for all.
After all, where else can you get a pedicure
and an oil change all in one go, and slip in
your grocery shopping to boot?
It's just too incredibly convenient to pass up.
Thus come the masses, the great unwashed,
or the washed, for that matter, like a tidal wave
beating against the glass doors
and spilling into this mecca of consumerism
as it lures in entire pilgrimages of converts,
composed of countless members—all desirable,
be they men, women, or children,
be they wealthy or unemployed,
be they black people,
brown people,
white people,
red people,
yellow people,
and every color in between—
that cross the fated threshold
of those sliding glass doors,
each bringing two times as many hands,
ten times as many toes,
and a million fold as many memories
milling around in their minds,
until multitudes flock to this temple
of cheap laptops and toilet paper,
of discount dinnerware and duct tape,
of bread and wine and cheez-it crackers
and plywood and optometrists and salt.
All are called to stand up
for this over-inflated establishment,
this store that had unwittingly morphed
into a universe in its own right—
self-sufficient, fully-fledged, and indisputably functional:
a model microcosm to our own imperfect world;
an island unto itself; a high-voltage bubble of commerce
that had boiled over the top,
frothing into some hyper-charged
cash-and-credit force field that trapped its contents
within a finely-tuned matrix
of creeds, rules, and regulations, which formed
a new and complete set of guidelines for existence,
apocalyptic bylaws and all.
The voice of God came in over the loudspeaker,
but I didn't listen.
The clerk handed me my change,
and we wished each other goodnight.
As I was leaving, I caught a glimpse
of the lady one checkout over
who had helped me a few nights before—
a sad, flabby woman who happened to be discussing
with a couple of acquaintances how she was
about to give her ailing dog up to the shelter
and how she'd spent five hundred dollars
just to fix her car.
She must have crossed the threshold
of those sliding glass doors too.
I clutched my shopping bags brimming
with granola bars and foot cream
and the rest of my eclectic assortment,
and felt my pieces of produce
shifting around in there somewhere,
black twist-ties and all.
I stepped outside, past their threshold
and into the open air, away from
this merchandising megalopolis of heaven and hell
all rolled into one; away from this standardized
department store utopia with its universal
purgatory of shopping carts; away—making off
with the forbidden fruit
I'd filched from
retail paradise.
Wrapped in flimsy plastic,
they were tied off at the top.
The twist-ties at Wal-Mart are black.
Maybe it's just a coincidence,
or maybe it's a strange omen—
the delayed knee-jerk reaction
to the start of a new millennium,
marked by loaded links
to the material world.
I crossed the parking lot,
nearly empty, and tried to ignore
what hung overhead.
There was a full moon out tonight,
and it was going to make itself known.
Wanda Sobieska
