The Health Department Inspector Watches Her Daytime Talk Shows

In the window you see a lady fish curved upright
using her right fin to wield a two tined fork.
An apron around her waist, she shares the plate glass
with a rack of ribs shaped like a woodcutter’s wedge.
Ricki Lake’s show is on the black and white TV
on the card table at North Avenue Fish Market.
Boyfriend and girlfriend shriek,
and boyfriend leans till his woven blue
What Would Jesus Do? car key necklace swings.
Today’s inspection is a rerun of the one I did last fall.

Customers under the spell
of buffalo fish on ice
strain to hear what the fight’s about today.

Two by fours block A&J Liquor’s rear exit; “White
Teens Who Dress Black” is on the screen. With orders
and clipboard, I join the owner by the register,
to watch the audience judge a white boy
in wide leg jeans. No one likes that his pants
ride so low. I review the codes about exits.
They start showing how the girls look; we coincide
in feeling that it’s best you’re only young once.

Twenty-five-cent chips
bleed grease right through foil. Since November,
they’re thirty cents. The people find out
one bag at a time.

When I arrive at Love’s One Stop, the same show
continues, on a set in the back room out of sight.
The cashier wonders what’s going on, so I tell her—
I saw pink girls with brown straight hair, braided
Black girl tight. At the front door of Bright Foods,
dirt bikes trip me. Cheese scraps on the slicer
at Gold Star II. Abdel counts the patient whole
and half gallons and pays the Golden Guernsey man.
I catch Fox Six News at Noon while waiting,
about three excited minutes, or five. They
promise to expose new hidden dangers
on the broadcast tonight at nine.

            Rivals hiss
“he ain’t yours, you ugly bitch”
Kulwinder Lal, working
alone at Quick ‘N Cash
watches Jerry Springer.

In the tavern basement there’s company when the Beloit
Beverage man thumps down with a hand truck and the tie-
wearing salesman from King Juice checks his company’s
flavors and fruit flies patrol the bottom of the bottle chute.
Upstairs, Montel’s guest says her second husband
is also her uncle. Retired men at Tiny’s Lounge
only groan a little, as they too may have known
situations. They analyze—“She don’t meet
too many people,” then ignore the rest of her story.