BRENT KININMONT
Shopping
More puzzling than
a hearse parked outside
the supermarket
is this keypad on
the driver's door.
You can picture how
it got here:
the pallbearers losing
their grip, the driver
padding his body—
The key?! The key?!—
like somebody checking
he’s still there.
For now, nobody is
behind the wheel.
And in the deeply
tinted window
at the business end
of the carriage,
you can’t see beyond
your own reflection
before you disappear
through yawning
glass doors.
On the other side
you spot somebody
in a black necktie.
He’s holding a basket.
Behind him
the frozen meats.
‘Shopping’ appears in Brent Kininmont’s first collection of poetry, Thuds Underneath (Victoria University Press, 2015). The poem, which previously appeared in Sport, is one of several in the book that are located in Japan, where he has lived for two decades. He is originally from Christchurch, and his work can be found in a range of local publications, including JAAM, Landfall, takahē, Trout, Turbine, and Best New Zealand Poems in both 2009 and 2011.
Kininmont comments: "'Shopping' is drawn from an encounter outside my local supermarket in Tokyo."
Links
Victoria University Press author page
Interview at NZ Poetry Shelf