Rampage

I hold her hand tighter
than my camera’s lens.
A flock of wild chickens
rampages through the supermarket,
and they are horrified at everything
they find.

One of the cashiers
is a bald man with one eye
who spent his childhood
on a farm. He is going from
aisle to aisle to snap their necks
one handed with the inertia
of their twisted mangled bodies.

Three of them find their way
into the dressing rooms
where a woman is half
inside a brand new gown
she had been looking at.
She screams and falls backwards
into the mirror on the wall,
and when it breaks a shard
cuts the lace and the flesh
underneath it.

She lets go of my hand
and picks up one of the small
birds scurrying past our feet,
and says to me,
“We have to at least try
to save one of them.”
I knew her too well
to tell her that it would be pointless.