Ekphrastic Inventory

(being an honest and concise catalogue of the back burners)

Halloween remnant saves its
Fermented banana juice pool
Fruit flies feed like wildebeest at the oasis
Kiwi teeters on the brink
Reduced price Clementines
Usurped the Satsumas

Fruit shavings that didn't make the cut
Fester in non-recyclable horrors:
Orange cleeved in two, its blood soaked the salad,
Shrivelling arcs of melon crush pulpy strawberry heads

Behind the vitamin C lurks salt from an unknown sea
Its crusty hat and greasy coat have known many
A chip

Fancy coffee tub stands on the corner
Oldest resident of this fading community,
It remembers the days of scourers and lemon Jif

Reclaimed bottle noses the rotting fruit,
Mourns for the loss of its sweetened contents
And the days when it balanced upright

Twin sentinal bottles of shandy, slightly sticky,
Console each other. Survivors two of eight.
The first to go was shattered in transit.
Fizzy essense is worn as a mark of respect, sullying the
Cardboard box whose sandwich bags remain
Horribly abused. Some contain fruit, others coins,
Rarely a sandwich

Beneath the favourite licorice tea, beside spearmint
And chamomile, behind cinammon and peppermint,
The black pepper hides its face. Six corns remain
Intact. Soon it will see where the black bag goes
For itself. But not yet. The plastic cartons eye it
Jealously. Its time will come.

And this an improvement on yesterday.