July 18th, 2009
Gregory Crosby
EVERYTHING & NOTHING™
The spines, unbroken, on the shelves
of Borders, of Barnes & Noble.
Killing an hour this way without you
feels like betrayal.
Once we loitered without intent
the controlled-climate of
shopping arcades, when the apartment
walls closed in
or we giggled, giddy, romancing the
materialism, marriage,
a Sunday. Figures in a landscape:
Couple at Opposite Ends of
Organized Living™. Man & Woman
With Their Best Buy™.
Love declared in lowercase, a bargain,
haunted for a house
yet to come, caressed the curve
of overly-designed
appliances, sighed after rainbows
of plastic, the multitude
made by the multitudes of China.
Each product, passed
between us, handled, held up to
a judgment of light,
the texture of union split into
waves by verdicts
on our blended self. We were
surrounded
by things: their pornographic
gravity, their cataloged
reality. Centerfolds of middling
desires, filtered.
In the lodge of happy tedium, career,
we sweated out
a vision quest. Our credit swelled
like a reddening tick.
Then liquidation. Then lay away.
Is that all there is
to a fire sale? Memories I can’t
discount: looking for
you, searching the aisles, something
held in my hand
to show, to present, to test against
Our Brilliant Lives™
Long Past Us™. In these chains, our
neighborhood (once)
groans beneath their weight. Of
Anything We Wanted™
Of Everything & Nothing™.
–from Rattle #30, Winter 2008
I don’t suppose someone could correct this to read my actual name? Gregory CROSBY, as in Bing? This is the second time you guys have dropped the R… It’s the sweater, right? And the fact I’m eating Jell-O?
Fixed, sorry, Greg. Where else did we do it?