MALL BABY

It was a year of flaccid resolutions

And frozen entrees

Historically ordinary 

How time ballooned and resisted rhythm

There was the day the blue barrel floated by

The day the hawk flew close enough for us to see its red feathers

The day the squirrel brought its bodyweight in bread up the catalpa tree

Later, a stale, half-bitten baguette appeared on the patio table

A picnic abandoned to bad weather

It’s raining and I’m reading the news

There’s a piece on the popularity of parks

Someone is quoted saying, 

When I’m in nature, I think natural thoughts

And I know what that’s like

Here you can buy your own beliefs

While the sun makes another bid

And people are airing out their despair

People are out playing frisbee

People are out saving the economy

David Byrne says shopping is a feeling

I’m returned to the mall of my mind

The one still crowded with people 

And in the heart of Rome

(For the piazza is not the mirror, but the mirage of a mall)

Everyone is dressed in jewel tones there

Though the quality of light is stale bread

To be part of the collective experience

You have to want something pointless

And it isn’t embarrassing to want it publicly 

I came of age at that mall

Had my first kiss at that mall 

I thought Dan’s tongue tasted like hamburger 

A high frequency security sound was piercing my ears

What I must have sensed was a sickness

Maybe even an evil

The coins were rolling themselves 

And threatening

I was revolted, but I didn’t stop there

Sarah Jean Grimm is the author of Soft Focus (Metatron, 2017) and a founding editor of Powder Keg Magazine. She edits the small press After Hours Editions, and hosts Bank Holiday, a reading series in Catskill, NY. She lives in New York and works as a publicist at Catapult, Soft Skull, & Counterpoint Press