Pickles · 4:21am Jun 12th, 2019
In the grocer
pureness
is measured by the number of wrappers.
A package in a package in a package in a wrapper.
To shame and shackle the
poor (comma?)
fools.
They trick you, in the grocer.
Unwrapped, warm, ready to eat
sold by the pound
just like Grandma made-
Not like those three and four times wrapped frozen dinners-
it sits between the most packaged things
to be bought together, despite the lie:
here we have unwrapped it for you, pretend it's pure.
The purest thing in the grocer is pickles.
Not wrapped 4 times, 3 times, 1 time, none times.
Pickles, it says, is a trick
wrapped inside out for less than once.
They sit in a mason jar with a hand written mass printed label.
These pickles were made in 1917,
by a real grandma,
sent to a real grandson.
Packed in a mason jar to keep overseas.
The boy to her was in superposition.
Alive and dead with equal likelihood.
On his way home, or staying in some foreign soil forever.
The pickles were not his gift.
It was the mason jar that was the true prize.
Useful for a million things, described
in detail.
(By a company closed these 75 years. Visit the website for more!)
When the boy came back his best friend did not.
Then together,
grandmother, grandson, best friends widow, joined and incorporated.
They made the mechanical grandmother.
Who makes by mechanical hand her pickles,
puts them in jars no one else can make,
and prints perfectly the label that lets you know.
The pickle is the packaging. The jar is the product.
I live in a house filled with mason jars.
mason jar tables and mason jar plants.
For that boy solder, after all I never liked pickles.
His story must be true. It's printed on the back of the jar.
No comma in the third stanza
It's a good poem.
boop
Thanks.
Neat.