on shopping.
value city hunches in a strip mall just south of metro st. louis, its skin bristling with faded stucco. the corpses - battered ford contours and ghetto fabulous beamers - mingle in the pot-holed parking lot, spaces jagged like teeth meant for tearing. the doors don't open automatically: you must choose yourself to enter the belly of the beast.
innards bathed in purple fluorescence. the light is digestive acid slowly leaching the life from employees and customers alike. i am afraid if i stay here too long, the monster will start to drink me. racks of synthetic clothes gleam with old blood and decaying hope. gold and silver church hats shine, swallowed fillings of old teeth.
i am searching for bedding. ostentatious patterns scream at me, everything feels cheap and flimsy. the customers will keep coming back because everything here is impermanent and poorly made, everything must be replaced and replaced or left broken. everything is synthetic; there is no cotton, no linen, no air. i fear the day when i will be forced to wear nothing but items from the racks of spring-colored plus-size atrocities, wedging a size 28 ass into acres of daffodil yellow polyester. i fear the day when my clothes will echo a world my body has left, when i will no longer fit in anything but gut-hugging clingy rayon skirts and peach faux-silk blouses that end mid-thigh. after all that i have eaten, i will be fat enough to be consumed.
the employees move like diminished shadows. they too shop here, shelving opened boxes of pans and fingering cheap straw purses, arranging screen-printed pillows that read "Girl Friend" and "FLIRT." the best position to work is the cash register; it is closest to the natural light, it is the fastest route of escape. "stefani" scans the price tag on dawn's dress. she is wicked thin from the beast's predations, and her 14-gauge eyebrow ring is held in by a tiny thread of flesh. the storm blows in through the doors; so many climb willingly into the belly. so few seem to leave.
the beast slouches onward towards bethlehem.
innards bathed in purple fluorescence. the light is digestive acid slowly leaching the life from employees and customers alike. i am afraid if i stay here too long, the monster will start to drink me. racks of synthetic clothes gleam with old blood and decaying hope. gold and silver church hats shine, swallowed fillings of old teeth.
i am searching for bedding. ostentatious patterns scream at me, everything feels cheap and flimsy. the customers will keep coming back because everything here is impermanent and poorly made, everything must be replaced and replaced or left broken. everything is synthetic; there is no cotton, no linen, no air. i fear the day when i will be forced to wear nothing but items from the racks of spring-colored plus-size atrocities, wedging a size 28 ass into acres of daffodil yellow polyester. i fear the day when my clothes will echo a world my body has left, when i will no longer fit in anything but gut-hugging clingy rayon skirts and peach faux-silk blouses that end mid-thigh. after all that i have eaten, i will be fat enough to be consumed.
the employees move like diminished shadows. they too shop here, shelving opened boxes of pans and fingering cheap straw purses, arranging screen-printed pillows that read "Girl Friend" and "FLIRT." the best position to work is the cash register; it is closest to the natural light, it is the fastest route of escape. "stefani" scans the price tag on dawn's dress. she is wicked thin from the beast's predations, and her 14-gauge eyebrow ring is held in by a tiny thread of flesh. the storm blows in through the doors; so many climb willingly into the belly. so few seem to leave.
the beast slouches onward towards bethlehem.