let’s eat some candy

                  1951

let’s eat some candy.

let’s eat more than our skinny

bodies have a tolerance for.

let’s eat by the mouths-full

sucking the juices in.

let’s go to Chasidor Leo’s Variety store

across from the backstop where

the candies are loaded into bins

under glass at the counter, each bin a globular

cluster of stars!

hard and soft, red, yellow, and green,

sprinkled with sugar.

we’ll eat to our hearts content.

"fill the bags, Mr. Leo!

fill ‘em up so that they meet the rims.

ten of the green. ten of the yellow, and

ten of the red"!

the chewy ones will fill our early mouths,

bleeding the succulent juices ‘till

they dribble out across our cheeks.

friends, let’s count our money.

the more we have the more we can buy

and the more we’ll eat!

let’s pool our loot because we’ve learned

that sharing is a good thing,–– and then

each of us will build our stash of goods to our liking 

searching our pockets for what we know is never there,––

and let's ask Mr. Leo "which ones might be free".