New Poetry by Paul Tanner

closed an hour ago

and there’s still 6 pallets of stock left to do
before we’re allowed to go home. 

I step outside for a smoke.
and this guy comes up to me and he says: you not open?
I tell him: no
and he says: oh come on, just let me in to get a few things?

now I could explain that our legal trading hours are over
and that there’s no money in the tills,
that we are not insured to have people besides staff in now,
that I’d be fined and fired for letting him in, and so on 
but look, we closed an hour ago
and there’s 6 pallets left
and I suspect he knows all this anyway
and is just bored and lonely
so I just tell him: no

oh, do you know what? he says. I’ll be making a complaint about you! 
he marches off
and when he gets to the road, he turns 
and walks backwards across it, yelling:
I’M GONNA MAKE A COMPLAINT! MARK MY WORDS, I’M GONNA –
a car swerves around him, horn blaring –
he stands there in the road waving his fist at the car 

then turns to face me again: 
THAT’S YOUR FAULT, THAT IS! BE SEEING YOU IN COURT! 

and my peaceful well-earned break?
it’s nearly over.


- © Paul Tanner 2020

Paul Tanner's novel, “Jobseeker”, is available now at Amazon. His latest collection, “Shop Talk: Poems for Shop Workers”, was published by Penniless Press in 2019.