Spring 2016
OLGA ABELLA
In Her Own Words:
This poem is evidence that I did get something done during my sabbatical. I had a memory, but was not feeling nostalgia. At all. The poem was just published in Blue Collar Review (Fall 2015).
Cashier at Winn-Dixie
Eight hours of standing, left leg
hurting even before posing
behind the register.
At night I dream of customers
laying groceries on my bed, impatient
to be rung up. I tell them no, I am
trying to sleep, come back in the morning
when I am at work.
They pile their cans of hominy and peas
along my left leg, throw their sacks of potatoes
on my knee, loaves of bread a foot high on my stomach
while I struggle to keep up, to figure out the price
of a can of Libby’s if six cost a dollar.
There is no register, no belt to move the milk
or ground beef. But they keep coming with their
cookies and dog food. Wanting cigarettes and batteries.
And all of it, all of it, on my left leg, the weight cementing,
encasing, keeping the leg from bending, from running
away from these people who now sit on the edges
of my mattress not happy, threatening to call the manager.
I yell, I’m not wearing my uniform, just before
the alarm goes off and I wake to another day of standing.
