The Vulture of Retail

Spirit comes circling,

tattered wings unfurling,

scanning cracked parking lots

where fluorescent dreams once lived.

.

Through boarded-up glass windows it drifts,

a cloaked skeleton grinning wide,

fingers of bone curling around

the husk of a failed giant.

.

The silence of dust,

of stale perfume,

of stripped metal shelves,

and mannequins frozen mid pose.

.

It’s perfect.

.

Spirit comes dragging crates of severed heads,

fog machines, polyester capes,

and aisles of bloodied plastic knives.

.

It settles overnight

into a Sears' old bones.

Shoes too big,

ceiling too high.

.

Yet Spirit still drapes plastic cobwebs

over tile once scrubbed for Christmas.

Still hangs rubber masks where polos were once folded,

clicking animatronic ghouls jolting to life.

It stacks plastic fangs that gnash and smile

where washing machines once hummed.

The walls still whispering of clearance sales,

but, alas, Spirit never listens.

.

It laughs, an emberdark ghoul unbothered,

turning sallow grief

into cheap, extravagant gloom.

Breathing a quickened pulse,

into a retail grave.

Spilling laughter in the rot.

A wandering carnival of decay.

.

It's carrion commerce,

living off the gutted shells of ancient goliaths,

a vulture in polyester capes

feasting until November first

then vanishing like smoke.

It leaves only an aftertaste of cobwebs,

scars of black tape on tile floors,

and the memory of its grin,

its outstretched hands;

circling above,

its next commercial carcass cooling.