A Sunday At the Mall in 1998

On the escalator to the food court, glancing at your hungry Tamagotchi pet, you think about which poem to read in front of your sixth grade classmates and that visiting poet who is always sweating. You are scared to read the one where the hands on the clock spiral from the classroom like fighter planes, weaving into an operating room where your mother’s breast is exposed, drawn up with black marker like a runway or an instruction manual of where to cut and leave enough to kill. You find her in line at TCBY and show her your new shoes.