Department Store Delirium

I enter demented
department store dimensions
through black & white eyes,
my curfew shirked
in a pencil skirt,
hair pulled back,
cloth in hand,
on an express errand
to the nonexistent
ninth floor for
a thimble made of gold,

the specialties buzzing
like an abandoned
ghost town,
display cases echoing
their emptiness.

Manipulation ricochets
off uppity upturned collars
pointing to a deprived sky.

And you ask if I'm happy?

The elevator arm reverses,
forward marching
complaints to the third floor.
Retail hussies swing
hat boxes from wrists,
and I'm insisting
on the mystery of the missing,
an acid trip of managers
questioning my credibility.

I shrink in a sofa
like a psychiatric patient,
surrounded by bridal gowns
and formal dresses, forgotten
on the fifth floor,
locked in lunacy,
screaming sanity on a swivel.

I zig-zag, lapping
around perfume pushers
when backwash is in bloom,
the zoo of oblivious suits
dealing deception
and delirium in dime bags.

Come again.

You ignore the pleas
of pardon me
like I'm a Beast of Burden
bending defects
down doors of dysfunction,

catching my own mouth,
moonwalking in heels,
tipping mannequins like cows,

the voices whipping
my back with the wind
of my name's hurricane—
Marsha.

I trust fall in a corner
of the elevator
while you brandish
like trash the wax
and wood artifact outcasts.

Contortionists, conductors,
and capitalists are
stockpiled in storage,
taking up prime real estate space,
collecting dust like knick-knacks,
the new normal
of a knock-off watch,
a mound of bodies
left to rot,
forever feeding cannibals.

Well,

you can put me out on the street
with no shoes on my feet,

but then ask yourself,
how can we be grounded
when we keep returning to our pedestals?

This poem was inspired by "The After Hours" from The Twilight Zone, Season 1, Episode 34. The italicized words are lyrics from The Rolling Stones song "Beast of Burden."

This poem was originally published in Write Under the Moon on Medium.