All-Night Grocery Store Poem by Donal Mahoney

It tears the stomach out of Roy
to see old folks shopping
at an all-night grocery store

ancient couples,
on canes and walkers
in their eighties and nineties

hanging on to a cart
almost as wobbly as they are
up and down the aisles piled high.

They place a few small cans
in their cart next to a
loaf of day-old bread.

We know the poor will
always be with us.
But why in America

do we have so many?
And why do we fat folks
just stare and stand by.