White Guy in an Asian Supermarket

Ranch Market 99. The new Asian superstore! As the white guy enters, Pushing his cart, he sees there’s no need to worry God’s imagination’s running dry.

Great ships still dock in San Francisco, LA, New York. Fishing boats throw up their catch. Tropical produce is hauled in containers raised onto trucks, unloaded, and arranged in these exotic mountains.

Dragon fruit stares in his face, red, something from a dream. A dozen kinds of mushrooms from a dozen fairy tales. Strange stalks he’s never seen, with names he’s never heard: Ngami, Boc-ha, Gabo. Pink pummelo, like grapefruit blown up with a pump. Banana flower buds.

In the seafood section dozens of black bass tread water in a crowded tank next to a roomier one swimming with silver carp. In a third, big-eyed jumbo shrimp, looking wise, have fun dive-bombing to the depths, then letting themselves be carried back up by the tank’s water jets.

Signs say “Fish Paste” and “Soak Squid”— more pleasant dissonance! Two dozen fish species lay on ice, as though sun-bathing.

It’s morning. The aisles are just beginning to awaken with questing shoppers.

America’s new face, he thinks as he pays and goes outside. And for a little while, what he sees there is also a strange bazaar.