Nine thousand quarts of orange juice
Five thousand loaves of bread
Eight hundred fifty bars of soap
Three hundred lipsticks (red)
A gross of bras
A score of scarves
A dozen wallets (black)
Ten cars
Eight dogs
Six cats
Three homes
Two canes
One granite plaque

*****

From Walking in on People © Melissa Balmain, 2014. Used by permission of Able Muse Press.

Editor’s note: If this poem doesn’t look like formal verse to you, and the only structure you see is the declining number of the items listed, then read it aloud to pick up the swing!

Melissa Balmain writes: “As you might guess, this one came about when I’d been doing some birdwatching. I considered starting one of those ‘life lists’ that birders have—then thought: what if there were other kinds of life lists? I never did get around to listing birds.”

Speaking of shopping, Melissa Balmain’s third poetry collection, Satan Talks to His Therapist, can be preordered from Paul Dry Books (and from all the usual retail empires). Balmain is the editor-in-chief of Light, America’s longest-running journal of comic verse. Her poems and prose have appeared in such places as The American Bystander, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Lighten Up Online,The Hopkins Review, Poetry Daily, Rattle, and The Washington Post. Her other poetry collections are Walking in on People (chosen by X.J. Kennedy for the Able Muse Book Award) and The Witch Demands a Retraction: Fairy Tale Reboots for Adults.A member of the University of Rochester’s English Department since 2010, she lives nearby with her husband and (for now) one of their two children. She is a recovering mime.

“Missing Plaque” by QuesterMark is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.