Barbara Brooks

Food Lion, it’s where I shop, pick up what I need.
Make a list but it is not organized
like Mom’s: produce, frozen, milk.

She would push the cart up and down the aisles.
Too tired to make lunch, she would pass the deli,
pick up a turkey sandwich she and Dad would split.

Stopping at the bakery
cookies in clamshell containers
two for five dollars

chocolate chip
oatmeal raisin

She placed them in the cart–
their treat for the week.

No cookies in my cart
when I leave the store.

 

Barbara Brooks, author of The Catbird Sang and A Shell to Return to the Sea chapbooks, is a member of Poet Fools. Her work has been accepted in Avalon Literary Review, Chagrin River Review, The Foundling Review, Blue Lake Review, Third Wednesday, Peregrine, and Tar River Poetry, among others.