Poetry: The Phenomenology of Shopping

The Phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy of Shopping
–Ali­son Hawthorne Deming
From Genius Loci

Fax it to me he said and
I said I will though it meant
since I was liv­ing in a cabin
on the coast dri­ving to town and
chat­ting with the innkeeper
for an hour because that is
the neigh­bor­ly rhythm
of a small town and since
I had already disrupted
the qui­et of my day I drove on
to the city to check out
the out­lets and buy pasta
and wine–a fine Valpolicella
so cheap I bought three–
and lis­tened on the long drive
home to the radio telling me
how many pounds of dump space
I would save each year
if I used less stuff–comics
for Christ­mas wrap, mixing
frozen juice in a pitcher
instead of buy­ing it in glass–
and I scanned the bags beside me
that had grown like spores
in the petri dish of my car and
felt as if I’d no hand in their
mul­ti­ply­ing and asked myself
in dis­gust, “Who’s dri­ving this car?”