AT TARGET 
Adrian Korpel 

 When I enter the coffee shop at Target, a chorus line of fat, happy bagels and sinuous pretzels welcomes me. I choose a bagel studded with sesame seeds like a diamond-encrusted ring, order a double cappuccino, sit down, and look up at the commercial spectacle above me.

 From the store’s ceiling, gridded with fluorescent lights, posters hang down like banners for the Good Life, the Life you have a Right to, the life guaranteed by Mastercard. The poster closest to me shows a deeply contented pharmacist, smiling broadly while holding up a bottle of cough syrup. Close by hangs a paper housewife in a pink, subtly swelling tee shirt, also smiling and carrying a half-gallon milk bottle in each hand. She is using them as semaphore signs to signal the pharmacist, her paramour. They spell out my love, my love, my adorable apothecary, drop your white coat and run to me, drugged by desire. 

 But she is not the only one yearning for the apothecary. Another woman, much farther away than the tee-shirted signer, is running toward him along the ceiling. She is a lawyer in full stride, arms swinging. Her gray business dress is Simple yet Elegant, Sober yet Attractive, Prim yet Alluring. She knows that Great Design Doesn’t Have To Cost A Lot, as she tells me in three-inch bold letters beneath her feet. Will she reach the pharmacist in time before the semaphore siren has lured him to her grotto? It’s problematic, there are choices involved, arrows that point to other caves in the store: Jewelry, Cosmetics, Health, Beauty, Lingerie, Men, Women, Maternity. 

 I sip my coffee, bite into my bagel, and watch the drama unfold high above me in the cork-tiled heavens. There is nobody else around, there is only me and the ineffable universe of banners and bagels, pretzels and coffee, the sufficient metaphysics of my desire.