Bargains!

Consumer hypomania is a terrible joke, but at least
it’s reliable. Home Goods and Target have the exact
same ad: a woman comes in for one thing
and leaves with twenty. Among ourselves, or anyway
the selves we sell each other
on retro-pastiche magnets and ironic
wall hangings, we wonder what we came
down this aisle for. What kept us up on the early
night we set for ourselves and drowned us
in television or Wikipedia.
If it happens to all of us, it must
be normal. If it happens to the best of us,
even better. Look at this mess we’ve made
of our lives. Let’s drink to it. Let’s drink to it
with the girls. Let’s drink. In woke circles,
we do the same thing and call it late capitalism.
No ethical consumption etc. Let’s smoke to it
with the chosen family. The truth is, I don’t know
how much shame is appropriate. How much fear.
I keep making mistakes. I ask a man at IKEA
whether I just saw him at Shoprite. No, he says,
smiling. You saw someone who looks like me.
How are you today, asks the checkout
attendant, and I blurt, This place is terrifying.
I say it for the comedy and because I can’t bear
anything anymore. I don’t remember 
how she answers. I’m dying, I mumble to myself, 
I’m dying, but I do it in an exaggerated imitation 
of Sean Connery’s accent. See, doesn’t that 
help? Doesn’t it? My friends will laugh. 
My siblings will worry. The truth is, I take 
these pills to keep myself just this side
of relatable. It’s the only currency that never
collapses despite endless inflation. We take
relatability by the trunkload to the bank. Did I eat today?
Where did I park? What am I crying about? 
An embarrassment of riches. Bright rows
of breads and detergents. Endless rotation of the same 
English actors in their eternal prep school drama club. 
I don’t know how much you have to lose before you’re broke, 
but I have a terrible feeling. So often, so, so often I have 
this feeling. Let’s drink to it. I’m afraid 
to drink to it alone.

Fiona Chamness is a writer and musician from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her work is published in PANK, Vinyl, the Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner, the Indiana Review, Anomaly, and elsewhere, as well as in several anthologies and in the poetry collection Feral Citizens, co-authored with Aimée Lê. She was the recipient of the Beloit Poetry Journal's Chad Walsh Prize in 2014. She also writes and performs with queer feminist punk band Cutting Room Floor. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University, Newark.