Galleria Ode

Something there is that doesn’t love the mall
where we used to chainsmoke on the mezzanine
 
and watch the escalator’s endless crawl
up from Häagen-Dazs to Chuck E. Cheese—
 
something so embarrassed by it all, it shatters glass 
and scatters yellow lading slips among the weeds,

and strips whole runs of copper from the walls
of what was once a Limited, a County Seat—

their slender mannequins spray-painted now
with cartoon boobs and cocks, unseen
 
until the new kids come to flash their phones
inside the ancient ruins of the Regal 6—

where webless, clueless, on our own,
we used to hold hands in the dark and kiss.