We each smell
of milk sometimes, brother.

We are staggering through
the cellars of our abandoned hungers,
ripple of cell song,
ripple of WIC paperwork passing
by your young eyes
at a cash register.

This is when the dead step
out of the space
between the grocery aisles,
canning jars in hand,
Dustbowl recipes tucked
inside, how nothing goes
to waste clings
to fried-dough
donuts: one to give peace
and one to take when
there’s a call for seconds.

If you stare at the dead
in the store long enough they
would reverse
direction until you blinked
sending them spinning
again like the few Fruity Pebbles
circling our bowls, as if the neighbor
who reported social services
telescoped into our kitchen
pocked with cereal, as if
reaching to our bedrooms
for a crinkled bag in corners,
as if you pointed
at us for too much, too much,
as if you will crook
your evening finger
with that neighbor’s heart.

Sugar does not impress
me, but what it sings to hunger
makes me swoon, a faithful
swoon to those phantoms
stacking and unstacking cans
at Skaggs, waiting for us
to arrive, then dragging
the kitchen table down
the aisles.

You know, the one
where it all began,
where hands go up in prayer
or resignation.

The spread
of generations’ hoardings
before us at the end
of each aisle, what we
can dismantle
with a sweet tooth,
holding, holding.