What was there left to do, in the age
of so many grocery stores, a plastic bag
dithering at Mall Road’s entrance, undone
from its recycling bin, aloft in the wind,
passing each customer, ripping with noise.
Then there were the markdown signs indoors,
all that packaging tossed into dumpsters.
On weekend days, the parking lot brimmed.
It made no difference to the lonely man
near the traffic lights with squared
cardboard at his chest.
—
Daniel Lassell is the author of Frame Inside a Frame (Texas Review Press, forthcoming Fall 2025) and Spit (Wheelbarrow Books, 2021), which won the 2020 Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize. He is also the author of two chapbooks: Ad Spot (Ethel Zine & Micro Press, 2021) and The Emptying Earth (Madhouse Press, 2023), which was a finalist for the 2024 Medal Provocateur Award. He grew up in Kentucky, and now lives in Bloomington, Indiana.
