Fruit for Vacancy
by Dylan Karlsson
“It’s all true, the warehouses have
taken over,”
a local news anchor pulled his shirt to
show
barcodes whipped into his salt-pressed
skin.
A tipple unearthed these warehouse
seeds
somewhere in a silicon valley tech-
mine about three or four years after
jobs died.
The seeds are droned into dry ground
and watered with primer.
So dust gives way to stuff when
farmers
plant their seeds, knicks for father’s
day, mothers’ with no days and kids
with no parents to order presents. This
gardener,
frivolous with his wrist, plants where
he pleases: a seed for the shopping
mall, the hospital, and the elementary
school.
He somehow gained admittance to a
church,
and placed a seed right on the altar.
It outgrew its religious right. When
the bishop
saw the size, he ordered more and
more
bodies of Christ to fill their unwanted
vacancy.
The air in the town thinned and turned
sterile,
and fluorescent lights replaced the red
sun. A welcomed exchange of
business cards.