The Haunted Flea Market.

On my way to the post office I passed an old abandoned parking lot, full of upheaved and cracked asphalt with weeds springing out
of the cracks like frozen green geysers.
The abandonment was poetic to me, and I forgot about the post office and instead went to the park, where I found a brown paper sack blowing down the path and used it to write down an elegy:

A dull black, sullen in the sunlight.
Cracked like egg shells from dinosaurs.
This parking lot used to host a flea market.
Every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
The click of metallic legs on cheap card tables,
unfolding in the early morning smudge,
could be heard in the land.
And gave joy to the junk-minded.
I often stopped to look at the National Geographics.
The things people can do with wooden clothes pins . . . 

But then the land got sick; the people got scared.
No one would stand next to you
and you would not stand next to them.
I sent my wife and kids to Chernobyl,
so they would be totally isolated.
The flea market stopped.
But I see ghosts and skeletons there.
Selling homemade hand lotion,
made out of glycerin, gravel, and Dawn.
Face masks sewn from leeks.
Rocks to throw at people who don't wear masks.
 Giant plexiglass hamster balls to crawl into and 
roll safely down the street.
Camphor prayer wheels.

Will a flea market ever open again in the land?
Will my children grow a third ear in Chernobyl?
Can a face mask cure bad breath?
And where will all the popcorn go?
The answer is melting in the sun.
Climbing an elm tree.
Eating a pretzel.
Kicking a mime.


Good-bye, Mrs. Calabash --
you're running a fever.