By Matthew Dischner
I punched a box today,
a three dimensional rectangular prism
made of cardboard and containing blueberries,
twenty-four packages of frozen conventional blueberries
to be exact,
one of ten that arrived this morning
and will arrive every morning,
ad nauseam, until people decide
blueberries in their smoothies
are no longer desirable.
I punched a box today and I’m not sure why.
Maybe to get revenge against the 60 pound case of rice
that fell on my foot seconds earlier.
Maybe because I enjoy the feeling
of cardboard yielding to a gloved fist
(there’s enough resistance to feel like
you’re not just ripping paper).
Maybe to vent frustration
at the endless retail Samsara hell
of stocking and warehousing
and re-stocking and re-warehousing
five days a week every week
closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s
Maybe because it looked at me funny.
All I know is I punched a box today
and it felt damn good.
A medievalist by nature and poet by force of habit, Matthew Dischner has been writing creatively since high school. He first felt inspired to write poetry after reading Beowulf, though his attempts to rhyme in Anglo-Saxon have fallen flat. After further failing to properly pronounce Old Icelandic skaldic verse, he moved on to become a student at NYU’s Draper Program.