A Poet Offers Her Confession About Grazing in a Grocery Store

Abstract

A Poet Offers Her Confession About Grazing in a Grocery Store Thomas Alan Holmes (bio) The produce section was a moral testI failed by nibbling things I had not bought,at first by tasting grapes dropped loose, so sweet—so many colors!—grapes I later pinchedfrom stems to palm, then in the roses, poppedinto my guilty mouth as if I'd yawnedand would preserve a lady's modesty.I filched a plum or two, in braver time,then waited my comeuppance, all in vain,and plotted plugging summer melons rightbefore the eyes of produce boys, my knife'sslick clip point hid beneath my fingertip. [End Page 118] Thomas Alan Holmes Thomas Alan Holmes, a member of the East Tennessee State University English faculty, lives in Johnson City. His recent work has appeared in Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Still: The Journal, and Not My President: The Anthology of Dissent. He is the co-editor, with Daniel Westover, of The Fire That Breaks: Gerard Manley Hopkins's Poetic Legacies. Copyright © 2019 Berea College