Shopping List

Tea bags, sugar, cream, Quaker Oats, bagels, cream cheese both kinds plain & jalapeño, tortilla wraps, tuna, condiment packets bundled by tens in jewel tones ruby ketchup, sapphire mayonnaise, topaz mustard like the kind on our picnic table under the Jacaranda, with watermelon cut fresh from the vine.

Snickers, porkskins, chips, a dozen kinds of sandwich cookie,

shall I sneak to the secret garden behind the maintenance shop?

Hope no prison guard eyes see me climbing barefoot monkey

sideways I did as a child stealing mangoes or limes from Mrs.

Rafanello's backyard. She fed the whole street with tart and sweet garden love.

Coca-cola, Gatorade, Sprite, no water can compare to the pitchers sparkling on linen tablecloths with my brothers and sisters conversation so casual the words flowing. No food or drink in this prison store can satisfy me.