Full Tilt

Photo:  Free market economy.   David Graham

And another poem today by the wizardly Martha Silano, who often proceeds at full tilt. 

Full Tilt

Hopefully you’re not pinned between a cable

and a crashing gondola, hopefully not on the clock

but busy catching bulldog stargazers, reckoning the cloud

above you resembles not a sheep but a giant wad of Orbit.

Here it’s a Saturday at the Full Tilt Arcade & Creamery,

cases freshly loaded with Mango Chili, Golden Guernsey Honey,

Vegan Coconut Chunk, quarters jangling in my pocket, poised

to be shoved into the slot for a round or four of The Simpsons/

Pinball Party, and just as the first ball pops on deck, in walks a woman

asking for vacuum cleaner bags. Everything’s digitized! I yell between slurps

of Roxbury Road, between gentle bumps with alternating hips

to increase my chances of getting the ball to land smack-dab

on Homer’s light-up nose. Why don’t you program your vacuum

to empty itself? But this only confounds her more, this gal who

must've snuck up through a crack in the pavement direct from the Menlo Park

Woolworths, which shuttered its doors in 1979. Maybe Target, I offer.

You would think, she scowls, making her way toward

the treacherous, cream-less, ping-less street. You would think.

 --Martha Silano