The Spare Part Unused Mercantile

The Spare Part Unused Mercantile

chimes
as I enter, and I recognize

the
handshake’s click between my palm

and my
old dial-up modem. Mourn

the
aisles: pay phones, beepers, television with antennae,

and
snow, and celebrities who now cameo in movies as themselves.

Shatner
and James van der Beek blink at me.

I’m
here to buy ribs, tires, change, but only find

the
loneliness of technology.

Old
diseases are for sale too: shingles, smallpox, polio.

Hiding
from vaccines -- having been replaced

by the
more hideous and virulent

super bugs
and ebola --

sneezing
and shuddering

in the
pillowed coffins they ordered in advance.

All
the spare objects snore, hiccup, cry tears,

take a
shit. Nothing is ever necessary.

I find
my old toothbrush in Aisle Four, touch its plastic muscle.

He
coughs. I can hear his lungs age as he swallows

a
Ricola. He has been replaced by the
electric.

Still pretty, he
tells me.
Don't ever lose

your beauty.
Don’t ever lose your necessity.

The
objects have real needs: they fall in love

or at
least want to have meaningless sex

with
other spare objects. Sometimes they have trouble

sleeping
as the truth cuts through the burn of their slumber:

You are not wanted.
As they wake, clutching their rusty parts

under
a fluorescent heaven, they cannot help

but hear
you are not needed

in the places where people spend money. Which is

everywhere.

I find dodo birds and dinosaurs in Aisle 7.

The dinosaurs have been replaced by Godzilla, robot
dinosaurs,

and Spielberg’s prototypes.

I still cannot find my purple sweater, or

the flaked-off memories

of my body being touched.

The memories were shaped like fluted boats.

They are unnecessary, replaced

by machines. In
my thoughts, what was once

a clean sheet is now

a quilt, seams curving inward like ribs.

My body feels

too animal

and not enough machine.

Christine Reilly

Archived 08/11/2011