there’s a bird loose in the store
and they called the bird catcher.
a guy that looks like a thirty-year-old
boy scout, who brought his eighteen
foot rod, his bird fishing pole,
with a bag on the end, to catch
the bird before it could shit
in the cookie and bread mix.
he raises a net on two support beams
in the meat department, waiting
for the catch. he tells me that it’s just
a house sparrow, they are always
house sparrows, usually.
as the dead man stocks frozen foods
with sunken eyes and sunken chest
and chilled body he works his daily
routine, his retrieval and placement
of what is meant because someone
in a suit has said it, from the fridge,
his home, waiting for four o’clock
to thaw his body in the fresh sun.
as middle-aged men and middle-
aged women seek for what they think
they must want, knowing exactly
what it is they want from their
vast uncertainty. they know,
yet they question the location
of the coffee and suntan lotion.
and i see all of this.
the mediocrity, the knowing
of nothing, which doesn’t make
me any better, knowing that no one
knows nothing does not make me
know something. i am lost,
i am lost in this job that tells me
exactly what it is i am to do.
i am lost like the fucking house
sparrow, doomed to the rafters,
seeking what it is i think i should want.
Matthew Tyler Boyer is a writer from Western PA. He plans on attending grad school next fall.