by Amy Marvin
Millennials are killing the shopping malls
reads the dying papers but they display
a finely aged skeleton at this point,
you can walk in them, you can
feel their erroneous bones without meat
or tendon to chew on. Some of us can
listen for their chattering ghosts
while others are more opened to
an empty silence, hauntology varies
from person to person and shopping mall
to shopping mall. Imagine a wide open
space with escalators and some people,
imagine them with paintbrushes
or a braggadocious socket
wrench, revising schematics, wearing personalized
hard hats, a crop top reading I <3 Intercourse,
Pennsylvania, preparing to build, preparing
to rest, dying to embrace. I recollect
teaching Kollontai like I recollect
circling a mall before it suffocated, thinking
we could spray paint bat wings across
the resting King of Prussia, thinking we could make
out inside a beached bare ribcage, thinking
we could make way for blooming dandelions.
Amy Marvin is a philosopher and comic poet from Jackass, Pennsylvania, where she is surrounded by random objects. Her work has been described by trans studies elders as “The Second and a Half Wave of Trans Studies.” You can find her at @amyrmarv on Twitter.
