I wrote this poem a few years ago but looked it out and re-editied it when a friend recently mentioned barcodes. In fact, I think the first version of the poem even predated self-service checkouts. Post-covid some of it perhaps now seems to belong to a distant time, when people stood closer in the supermarket queue, and we handled small plastic dividers that were placed between our shopping and the next person’s. Everything changes – but some of this ancient history was less than a year ago, so hopefully, it’ll ring a bell, or at least sound a familiar small electronic bleep.
.
Barcoded
Nipped out quick
checking in to
the supermarket queue
to checkout £4.75
of Mayday indulgence.
Strategically locating
the next-customer demarcator –
this is mine now, mine alone.
In chorus, lined behind
a suburban opera bickers:
She is getting very bratty.
Yes, she’s getting very bratty.
You are getting very bratty!
You are bratty, you are spoiled!
She’s a proper little basket.
Yes, a proper little basket!
I’ve had enough now, had enough
now, that’s enough now, that is IT!
Corner-eyed I register,
undefined hostility,
struck-through runkles
plough furrowed brows,
enmity, eight-to-life.
Ahead a woman passes her
(it’s labeled, so we know)
compact entrenching tool
to be blessed by blind inquisition
of that un-judgemental laser light.
Will it fortify allotment borders,
bury a lately composted doubt,
or succour deeply seeded beliefs?
Another plastic meridian drops behind,
consumer crowd control,
policing the shopping line.
.
.