On Sunday afternoons the price of broccoli

may well drop by eighty percent,

the noodles bear the pallor of the travel sick,

but the uncontracted can’t be picky
though the troubled, otherworldly stare of hunger

only adds to the spooky aesthetic

lazy or at-their-wits’-end detectives expect

from their local psychic correspondent;
should the missing person remain undiscovered

in the abandoned trophy factory

and the only recourse be supernatural,

it’s Cheryl who is waiting by the phone.
Hers is a dying trade—there’s no future in it,

she’d say—but a gift wasted is a sin,

however hard it is raising handfuls of boys

on a couple of hours of work a month
and Agony-Aunting for trashy magazines,

but harder is catching the cashier’s eye

and seeing not the routine mysteries of love

and divorce, but a moonlit winter’s night
a multi-story car park a decade away,

from somewhere, the quick bristling of fists,

and knowing the boys will be teenagers by then

or were already, or never won’t be.