Milk Snatcher Poem by Ian Elwood

An old man sits on some display furniture
reading a biography of Margaret Thatcher
as if each page was a road map to eternal life.
Target's the best place for this kinda thing.
This specific Target is in Anaheim, California,
maybe three hours north of Tijuana, Mexico.

He's wearing cowboy boots and a sombrero
woven by a cousin in central Guanajuato.
The cover features a saturated photograph
Of the Iron Lady herself sporting her famous
florid hair and grinning her grayish teeth.
Still pretty, still confident, still very—iron.

'I'm ninety years old, ' he tells a blonde girl
In broken English. She scratches her cheeks
and asks, 'Why are you, of all people,
reading about such a cruel monster? '
The old man adjusts his round glasses
and stares blankly into the open air.

'Call for H2 on line three, H2 line three.'
A woman in a smock places a yellow sign
by the display furniture and mops the tiles
like they were the gilded grounds of heaven.
'H2? There's a call for you—H2 line three.'
Like H2, the old man remains silent.

Raising the withered biography to his face,
he continues reading about the baroness
and her fight to end free milk in schools.
I guess they determined my opinion already,
he thought, waiting for the blonde to leave.
What is the point of me reading this then?