
This selection, chosen by guest curator Addie Tsai, is from Bloodwarm by Taylor Byas, released by Variant Lit in 2021.
A Grocery Store in Alabama
Over the apple bucket, I weigh a Granny
Smith in my hand and thumb the dents for rot.
I check for bruises like these shoppers check
for me—the blackened pit of a golden peach.
***
Another buggy’s wheel comes screeching around
the corner, a mother peering through the shocks
of hair escaping from her bun, her toddler
pointing and poking price tags, palming fruits.
***
I wonder what it must be like, no pop
or sting on the hand, no preparation speech—
don’t look, don’t touch—from a mother trying to save
herself from the pop and sting of not-so-quiet
***
whispers, the manager’s backhanded ma’am, the absence
of respect. Still—as I grab a pepper, garlic
paste—I can feel these shoppers slow around
me, as if someone paused this tape of my
***
black life, to point to me on screen and say
right there, we got her. I concentrate on the mist
of the veggie sprinkler, water sleeving my arm,
its hiss as soft as a mother’s shush, or the chafe
***
of a handshake, sliding palms before the hollow
thump on the back, or even the mother bending
to cover her toddler’s finger as she points
at me, her susurration—don’t point at that.

