is spic and span; you could eat off the floorif there was a floor; there isn’t, justa huge hole you can’t see at first, as a hotoctogenarian greeter distracts you by sayingCome again as you enter the rim, to whichyou say I never came the first time. Indeed:
at the rim’s entrance, there’s that automatedclimax machine from Woody Allen’s movie“Sleeper” called the Orgasmatron, but the line’sso long for it (for pairs or solo, no more),that it’s now closed for aisle-less clean-up. Imagine!
No, don’t. John Lennon masks are on sale BOGO;ammo is not available for comment.Here guns talk, defend their positions, We don’tkill people, we kill guns or magazines—that’sit: blame the bullets, not us. In fact, the bulletshave been amassing as the guns lobbiedin the lobby of a Galveston Wal-Mart, butyou weren’t listening, your kid has been workingthe claw machine and crying, so close, so close,
as the claw dumps its iPod on top of plushtoys that are useless because you must forgea connection, imagining life where a pileof inanimate stories beg for your attentionand toys next to Hell have no life of their ownthat your kid can devise dialogue for and with.
Did I say this was the Wal-Mart from Hell?Forgive me, I meant to say Next to Limbo.Don’t ask me where I was, I was making outwith the octogenarian—Floyd—who broughtyears of experience to culminate in one twoworded phrase Hello and welcome; his kiss canexpress his relation with past lusts distilledon his medicated tongue. Hello. Hell’s notreally Wal-Mart, just the last hurrah of libertiesbefore you must make a choice, beforeit is made for you within the decisive pointof a firearm: hole, or lobbied pile? Floyd unlocked
our long kiss then just gave me a cart, lookedbehind my head and said Welcome, brushingme aside. I held on to his vest until it gave wayand I put it on and said Welcome myself. Floyd kissedme again and then smacked me a good one, fistto lip. A man has a job to do, just like women.He shrugged and then jumped in the hole. Hola.
The hole has a sign above it, AbandonDiversity and Inclusion, as a New Floyd leadsthe crowdin their hourly cheer: Gimme a W!Gimme an A! an L! Gimme a ‘Wiggly’! to whichNew Floydshimmies his hips to make virtual ‘wigglies’in air, which was supposed to mean ‘hyphen’.
Nobody ever says hyphen in Hellunless you’re making a dash for it. ButFloyd 2.0 never gets to the chant’s final letteras carts have piled up like yesterday’s bodies,and who will wipe them down? I was hangry,not knowing if what I felt was anger or hunger,American diet bar none—if Limbo has no buffet,Hell is just another word for a Super 8 motel
at the lip of the hole you can’t see with no break-fast bar, not even coffee. But there’s also a fragrantdiner next to the Wally World next to the hotel,as if Heaven were one long olfactory act withthe cooling promise of tolled and housed embodiments,
housed in a greasy spoon from which comes heavenlysmells, not much else. The waitresses therehave angelic voices: they greet you and sayHon, we’re fresh out of wings. This is whenyou know you won’t get any kind of wings.Suddenly all I want is Floyd, but he is no longeron duty. Forever. Instead of Old Floyd, there’s no choice:
let us mourn all box store lives lost, their spiritsunleashed and contained in one reinforced,besieged shelter of mortar and brick wherethe shelves multiply as the ceiling stretches upward,just shy of a locked paradise, where the priceof entry rises as you demand to be marked down.
The silvery-fingered claw of the stuffed toymachine beckons, shines like the jagged steelriveted lip of the famous big hole, where to buytime, there’s one huge do-it-yourself checkoutstand: the catch is, you’ll have to stay and checkout someone else’s stuff forever, sorting and sorting,bagging and watching as New Floyds come and go,then turn into uniformed, framed photos, headand torso only, staring from a decorated sectionon the exit wall, where no one tells them Thank you
for your service any more. If you listen closelyas you leave to leap into the hole, you’ll hear themsoftly chant, Take it from us, it’s not the endof the world—and as you stop bagging somebody’sthings, having had enough of service, or servitude,whichever was first, you’ll choose to leap withunfazed glory wholly aware of your own sacrifice,
and let the headshots watch as your abandonedbagged things rise to re-shelve themselves butoutside, to make a mound out back behind WallyWorld, where one great seagull-yawping bakeddiverse landfill burns from the inside out.Damn, displays are gorgeous. Damned displaysare all that’s left to organize with any surety, purewithin their grounded stance of complex surfaces.
For those not committed to hole-leaping yet, there’smissed bargains and cupcakes to briefly grieve,no store could house your hungers for long, just wait,re-set, re-load, and see what’s targeted down the street.Shopping is a pleasure until the receipt finalizesyour reach’s extent. Floyd gets the last word: he leftme a plain white note where, inside, nothing survives:there had to be commerce in place of a pulseor a finite point, as he’d simply drawn a deafening blank.
***
Photo by Kirill Sharkovski on Unsplash