Taking Liberties with the Shopping List

By Doug Tanoury

I bought her products called Ocean Wind,

a line of all blue shower gel, shampoo and conditioner

thinking she would smell free and fragrant

as spray whipped by wind speeding over

the rising and rolling waves of Drake Passage,

where the wild blue water of the South Pacific

pounds a steel grey Atlantic and a great

green expanse of Southern Ocean.

I press my nose against her skin and breathe in the air

of the tempest torn passage just below Cape Horn

in the low southern latitudes where storms sweep the sea.

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Doug Tanoury is a lifelong poet whose work has appeared widely in both print and online journals. He is the author of more than twenty chapbooks, including St. Mary’s Art Cloister, Tolstoy’s Ghost, and Chicago Poems. An outsider artist by circumstance and choice, Tanoury writes outside the academic tradition, bringing a distinct voice shaped by lived experience rather than formal literary training.

He holds a BBA and has spent much of his professional life as a management consultant, a background that informs the clarity and structure underlying his work. His poetry often explores themes of place, memory, spirituality, and the emotional landscapes of urban life with a lilting lyricism, particularly in and around Detroit.

Tanoury continues to write and submit new work, maintaining a steady presence in contemporary poetry while remaining independent of academic affiliation.