How to Write a Road Rage Poem
Flavian Mark Lupinetti
Start by donning your Big Poet Pants because
you can’t write a road rage poem with both
an empty stomach and an artistic armamentarium
that’s even more depleted. Stop at the nearest supermarket
on your way home, although it’s not the
usual place you shop, and to this alien emporium
shepherd your list—ground beef,
green chiles, alliteration, bananas,
beer, anaphora, breakfast cereal--
but everything is laid out differently
from the store where you usually go.
What aisle has custody of cookies?
Why isn’t enjambment next to peanut butter?
Where are the family-size cans of metaphors,
and aren’t those bastards getting expensive?
Worst of all, the few checkout lines
with living, breathing cashiers
lumber along six shoppers deep, many
of whom are deracinated zombies who write checks--
who the fuck writes a check in public--
forcing you to use the self-service
checkouts installed by Kroger executives,
those black-hearted pricks who take joy
in firing unionized workers and replacing them
with machines that debate whether
you’re old enough to buy that six-pack
of Bud Light and request that you complete
a brief survey that you would never
ever ever respond to and express impatience
when you grab a Snickers and
a closing motif from the impulse item rack--
oh, here’s where they stock the skotison.
This escalating fury galvanizes your resistance
to returning your cart to the store or
even to paddock it in the unfortunately
spelled Kart Korral in the parking lot,
and instead you trot it over the curb and
stable it on the gravel in the cool shade
of the cottonwood trees before driving
home—a remarkably wrath-free journey--
to cook and to dine and to sit and to write
a road rage poem.
you can’t write a road rage poem with both
an empty stomach and an artistic armamentarium
that’s even more depleted. Stop at the nearest supermarket
on your way home, although it’s not the
usual place you shop, and to this alien emporium
shepherd your list—ground beef,
green chiles, alliteration, bananas,
beer, anaphora, breakfast cereal--
but everything is laid out differently
from the store where you usually go.
What aisle has custody of cookies?
Why isn’t enjambment next to peanut butter?
Where are the family-size cans of metaphors,
and aren’t those bastards getting expensive?
Worst of all, the few checkout lines
with living, breathing cashiers
lumber along six shoppers deep, many
of whom are deracinated zombies who write checks--
who the fuck writes a check in public--
forcing you to use the self-service
checkouts installed by Kroger executives,
those black-hearted pricks who take joy
in firing unionized workers and replacing them
with machines that debate whether
you’re old enough to buy that six-pack
of Bud Light and request that you complete
a brief survey that you would never
ever ever respond to and express impatience
when you grab a Snickers and
a closing motif from the impulse item rack--
oh, here’s where they stock the skotison.
This escalating fury galvanizes your resistance
to returning your cart to the store or
even to paddock it in the unfortunately
spelled Kart Korral in the parking lot,
and instead you trot it over the curb and
stable it on the gravel in the cool shade
of the cottonwood trees before driving
home—a remarkably wrath-free journey--
to cook and to dine and to sit and to write
a road rage poem.
Flavian Mark Lupinetti, a Pushcart nominated poet, fiction writer, and cardiac surgeon, received his MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Mark's work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Cutthroat, december, Redivider, and ZYZZYVA. His chapbook The Pronunciation Part will be published by The Poetry Box in 2025. Mark lives in New Mexico.
