Today’s early bird prompt was to use Katie Naughton’s Debt Ritual: Oysters as inspiration to write a poem which references another poet and contains a declarative statement. The poem should be set in a people filled place. My poem is set in the supermarket and references Sylvia Plath.

There are no oysters here,

just rows of vegetables polished

like a child’s teeth.  Boxes filled

with shiny bell peppers, their slow

decay disguised enough to make

them palatable.  We’re performers

on the stage of late capitalism. 

What do you think, Sylvia? How

do you like our world? You can

buy two different types of peach

for less than two pounds.  And

somewhere, a bomb is being

dropped on a family.  Petrol is

going up and meanwhile a child is

screaming for his mother. 

There are six types of orange here

but no oysters and still, the world

continues to drop bombs. 

Perhaps it isn’t about the oysters.

Maybe all I really want is to

taste the sea.