Sunday after Church the parking lot fills
and people drive circles to save those 50 steps
to the mall entrance.
When peasants gathered Sundays around Notre Dame
it might’ve been like this–what they found
is what we get: Madonnas and images of a heaven
where everything’s well-lit–and we believe
because fluorescent tubes erase our shadows
and our doubt.
Nothing’s old here, except retirees, and
they’ve got their walking shoes on,
tiny weights in their hands. They battle
decay in this temple of the shiny.
Some sit around fountains asking each other,
“Can you believe this?”
Once in Bozeman’s mall I saw a sculpture
made of Coke and Diet Coke cans. You would’ve
recognized the Air Force logo, but a nearby sign
explained, teenaged kids’d built it
in their church’s basement because
they’d given up drugs and had nothing else to do.
If I squinted, I could just about make out
the Christ ready to blast a smuggler’s Cessna
to bits over the Gulf of Mexico.
I chug the preferred orange froth.
Everything here seems to be a miniskirt.