Sheol
by Wade Martin


From high up on the second story
of the dream mall,

I see children and their women
and their men
ravening through department stores
looking for compartments that will hold
all the parts they’ve kept in their apartments.

Skeletons in every closet
skinny skeletons endlessly trying on clothes
though none of them ever fits just right.
One bones says to another
“They stopped making my size years ago.”

Vendors like vultures
study each passing form
testing smelling to see which is dead.
When one is dying or lifeless enough they strike
another glitzy cell phone case sold.

I drift in just to see the food
that never fills, the cup that always spills,
the trays and trash bins dirtying
the great food court in the sky,
the dumpsters barely beyond.






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