Senior Discount by Ali Liebegott

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend August 30, 2016   Senior Discount   Ali Liebegott

I want to grow old with you. Old, old.   So old we pad through the supermarket using the shopping cart as a cane that steadies us.   I’ll wait at register two in my green sweater with threadbare elbows, smiling because you’ve forgotten the bag of day-old pastries.   The cashier will tell me a joke about barbers as I wait. He repeats the first line three times but the only word I understand is barber.   Over the years we’ve caught inklings of our shrinking frames and hunched spines.   You’re a little confused looking for me at the wrong register with a bag of almost-stale croissants clenched in your hand.   The first time I held your hand it felt enormous in my own. Sasquatch, I teased you, a million years ago.   Over here, I yell, but not in a mad way.   We’re laughing. You have a bright yellow pin on your coat that says, Shalom!   Senior Discount, you say. But the cashier already knows us. We’re everyone’s favorite customers.            Copyright © 2016 Ali Liebegott. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “I worked as a cashier at a grocery store for seven years where we had a senior discount. This discount brought out the good and bad in people. I was newly in love when I wrote this and wanted to imagine me and my girlfriend growing old together being the good kind of customers.” —Ali Liebegott   Ali Liebegott is the author of The Beautifully Worthless (City Lights Publishers, 2013). She writes for the TV show Transparent and lives in Los Angeles, California. Poetry by Liebegott   The Beautifully Worthless (City Lights Publishers, 2013)  "They Were Not Kidding in the Fourteenth Century" by Maureen N. McLane "Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand" by Walt Whitman "I know I am but summer to your heart (Sonnet XXVII)" by Edna St. Vincent Millay Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038