Dead Malls

 

[Image by Forgotten Heritage]

Image provided by Writing in the Woods/Conroe & Spring NaNoWriMo

There were stores that had been stocked last week,

trucks that rolled before the cool front to the longer summer on our shore,

but the malls were closed.

Here levers and gauges and men and women 

Pulled and stoppered and stretched and dialed plastic fire until it bit

itself into shapes for the malls.

It was only last month that our cars sighed into the lines

you could see from the ladder through the shop's cathedral window; bow, quick,

Before the malls have closed.

We were talking about dinner at the handrail

When a monetary aneurysm staggered from the upper office downward

from the nerveless malls.

Ships rust, containers float offices into concrete weirs

We’ll find new stanchions under soaring highways, nest under rubber wings,

far from the closed malls.