“The Angel of Impulsive Purchases” by Jeremy Paden

164 Replies

Until the first decade of the 20th Century
was said to resemble, in some lights, a Ganymede,
in others a youthful Helen before the suitors,
the rapture and the war, just a babe, strong and willful,
capable of using wiles to fend off peddlers
of trinkets and moonshine. In the age of barter, it played
marbles in the clouds and rode on the backs of condors.
It had no job but to know itself and be beautiful.
Its life was a getting ready for the onslaught.
For centuries its only task was steel itself for trips
to town. It never bothered with monarchs and their tastes
for pet rhinoceroses or the drunken spending
of Spanish gold by pirates. It barely noticed
when Benjamin Franklin started up mail order books,
few readers were ever tempted to buy Hooker’s
Ecclesiastical Polity on a whim.
And then Montgomery Ward, Sears Roebuck, Ford
and assembly lines, peanuts, chocolate and sugar,
and then the jingles of Madison Avenue,
West Texas cotton and Mexican maquiladoras.
It’s come a long way, baby and it’s earned its rest,
deserves a long pour of a stiff drink and the rocker
on the porch with the Angels of Roman and Aztec
Market Days. It hears the call to come and advise,
to steer the man away from the two finger ring
with the pistol wings, to come and have the woman change
the channel from QVC to PBS, to keep
the poet off EBay, but it’s grown old, its joints ache,
its wings are ragged. Now no angel watches over
the impulsive shopper to keep him from buying
the organic wooden watch, the authentic bleached
cow skull, the mermaid skeleton, the green patent
leather loafers with the red hard-soles to match
the reversible polka dot Bowie from Etsy.

-Jeremy Paden

164 thoughts on ““The Angel of Impulsive Purchases” by Jeremy Paden”

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