Potatoes

Gerald Costanzo (b. 1945)

Grandpa said potatoes
reminded him of school.

Potatoes and school.
He said he'd wake nearly

freezing, kindle a fire
and throw two potatoes

on. Going to school
he carried them to
warm his hands. To
warm his feet he ran.

He said by noontime
those potatoes almost

froze, said he ate a lot
of cold potatoes for lunch.

Introduction of the Shopping Cart

Gerald Costanzo (b. 1945)

There was a man
who collected facts.

After work he rode twenty stories,
let himself in
to cartons filled with index cards
and his crucial lists.

Facts reveal useful lives.
He got things right.

The shopping cart invented
by Sylvan Goldman,
Oklahoma City, 1937.

When the man passed on
his relatives came.

P.T. Barnum had four daughters.

They searched through his cartons
for ten dollar bills.

The sky, which on cloudless
days appears to be azure,
has no true color.

He wasn't eccentric.
When they found nothing,
they threw everything
out.

His final fact:
you live and you die.

The shopping cart. P.T. Barnum.

The sky.

2008: Infant Innocence by A.E. Housman