Midnight Rambler

    after Allen Ginsberg

Mick Jagger is shopping for vegetablesand he is the hottest girl I’ve ever seen—a rainbow of loose pills in his pockets,a smirk on those obscene lips. Totally evil.He examines a tomato, then puts it back,grabs another. Tosses it into his basketwith no affection for the hothouse fruit,watery meat raring to burst from its skin.I want to walk like Mick, to grace the binsof peaches and the just-mopped floorwith my debauched parade of one. The alienhand of a dairy worker stocks shelveswith cartons of cream, jugs of milk.Mick buys a quart of 2 percent becauseyou don’t need to go for skim if you haveenough cocaine in your diet. You don’t needto buy shampoo, either, when rich girlswith blond bangs and eyes that flicker sexalways leave theirs behind. They want Mickto remember them by the scent of jasmine,or bergamot, but of course he doesn’t.He remembers the way a certain ass looksin certain jeans; one nipple weirderthan the other. He remembers to buythe cornflakes, the honey in a bottle shapedlike a bear. A guitar riff crackles tinnyover the speakers, which only makes it sounddirtier. Then drums. Then the glass casesof ice cream and Popsicles and frozen meatloaflight up, one by one, fluorescent, as he struts past,his only fans in these endless aisles of beige.