Today I Sold Poison

Today I sold poison: I blink beneath mercury vapor bulbs suspended overhead like sickly green moons in a burnt tire sky. I accomplish sale of poison in quart concentrate to voice on phone— a man never seen, but betrayed by pursuit of happiness. I want to kill it all, he says, and I only want to spray once! He wants Death Blow— the most toxic sauce we carry. And my arms begin to burn; maybe. I set down the container. Carts rattle by while hissing vacuum tubes inhale commerce capsules like pulmonary pills bound for some great iron lung atop a paper mache pyramid; and beeping forklifts and ringing phones compete with words— with memory— with existence. Sometimes there is not enough coffee to keep me buzzing across the shallows. Sometimes there is only enough to burn out my eyes so the madness, invisible, might not give me cancer. D.W.Moody