The Sin of Wanting a New Refrigerator
–Andrei Codrescu

Sin is impervious
to past transmutations
yet this is how it happened:
I desired
the bareness of my cell to open
in the vaster bareness of a new refrigerator,
it,
the refrigerator,
having come all the way from the First Avenue of my
New York days,

from the fruit stand of the dark
fat merchant. He opened it up
in another Universe: the milk bottles inside
lit up like Angels. First Avenue
refrigerated. I was a penny short
and I still am.
They tell me here that new refrigerators
are forbidden, oh
that penny had in it a sin
as elemental as the copper
it was made of

Photo by nrd on Unsplash