"I Love You, Rite Aid!" by Austin Beaton

And it’s not only the dollar aisle

or because you gave birth control

to a couple ex-girlfriends

or how you fed me Lexapro,

a pill Kanye West rapped about

in a studio probably not far

from a Rite Aid in Los Angeles.

Not just that five bucks

buys me and a millionaire

the same serotonin droplets

spreading under the part of the scalp

soft on a baby,

a chemical that tells me I’m me

returning like a rabbit angel

with a cartoon halo

floating back into

near-corpse Bugs Bunny

so he can keep eating carrots

and talk like he’s from New York,

& I can enjoy the smell of gasoline,

the beauty of an extra paper clip

given by a colleague

or finding beach rocks and agates

shaped like Nebraska.

It’s not only the reliability

of my favorite cashier,

a ketchup red vest

like the fun aunt at Christmas

or the palm tree parking lot,

the oranges glowing

out the black branches,

magneting the light

from your Pluto blue sign

like something that’d happen

between a moon and a star.

It isn’t primarily the ice cream

I never eat but glad is there for others

like Christianity and Botox,

or the bananas I don’t buy

because I’m not sure I always

want to be good to myself

but would give it all away

for a little familiarity.

I could move to a new state,

lose my mind or lover

then visit any of the 4600

drug stores

and the heels spin

on the driveway back home

from the mailbox,

an anybody American

boogie-ing down aisle 6

under bars of fluorescent,

the industrial hum

and same anxiety

a pharmacy can soften.

Rite Aid, I love you

and a stranger also

with your store membership

is asking, what am I shopping for today?

Who misses me?

How much does it matter

when I don’t trust myself?

---------------------------------------

SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems

http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines

http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems

http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems

http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast