Kitty Kapitalism Karma

 

Kitty Kapitalism Karma

In the old days
they smoosh your credit card
with a slider and you sign a receipt
with an actual pen. They rip out carbons
and flimsy slips, one for you, one for them,
one for a factory in San Francisco where
in 1970 a hippie can work night shift.
We whoosh stacks of tissue-thin papers
through machines that might mangle
so upstairs the bank can send you a bill
that might be correct.

One dawn as I leave work,
as my sunrising shadow walks
to my flowery VW beetle,
a credit slip blows across the lot,
slaps against my shoe—
I bend and pick it up.
Sixteen cans of cat food, eight dollars.
My moral choice: go straight home
so some lucky lady gets free kitty food
or return the slip and let
the merchant be paid.

To my surprise
and to this day I wonder why
I choose to return. Feeling the fool,
expecting no reward from implacable gods
of capitalism, I hand the charge slip
to the machinery amid paper dust
smelling of carbon inks which are
made of soot and wax (did you know?)
a one-minute delay in my departure
so on the way home the Porsche
losing control on 101 plowing head-on
into two oncoming cars killing six people
happens one minute before
I drive up in my beetle.

……

First published in Halfway Down the Stairs —thank you editor Jeannie E. Roberts
Cat photo by Amna Sayeed