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Everything in Store 60% Off
David Starkey
Poking
among the rows of scavenged shelves,
I feel a song of sympathy rising
for the remaining merchandise. How painful to be left over
on the last day
of business in a bankrupt store.
The bare walls sneer,
Take this junk away! Greeting cards with punch lines
that don't work, sweat shirts for schools
that went oh-and-twelve last year,
videos that bombed, tennis trading cards
and bright
pink garden hats. I make my way
slowly back into the humid Southern summer
heat, a few offscourings rescued
in my plastic bag: I've felt it, believe
me,
that wondering how much, if anything, you're worth.
© David Starkey
David Starkey teaches in the MFA program at Antioch University-Los Angeles. He is the author of a textbook, Poetry Writing: Theme and Variations (NTC,
1999), as well as several collections of poems from small presses, most recently
Fear of Everything, winner of Palanquin Press's Spring 2000 chapbook contest,
and David Starkey’s Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2002).
Over the past thirteen years he has published more than 300 poems in literary magazines
such as American Scholar, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cutbank,
High Plains Literary Review, The Journal, Massachusetts Review,
Mid-American Review, Notre Dame Review, Poet Lore, Sycamore
Review, Texas Review, and Wormwood Review.
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