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Ghost Mall


Getting lost in the Independence Center

makes it feel like the shops trade places
after skylights darken, the food courts
rearrange their tables and chairs.

In his sleep, Zoltar advises himself

for free. In SEARS, a child climbs out
of the clothes rack where she’s been hiding

her bleeding vagina and searches
Human Resources for a vending machine.              


At 9:15, when the shutters go down,
my wife and I stop looking for Teavana
and start looking for an exit. Grandma
brought me here, of all places, before dying

for ten years at The Groves, dying over
romance novels and cups of Jell-O.

Tonight, I see her sitting in the playground
beside the dark carousel.

She is still waiting for me to dismount
from my bedazzling steed.

Cameron Morse taught and studied in China. Diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2014, he is currently a third-year MFA candidate at UMKC and lives with his wife Lili and newborn son Theodore Ian in Blue Springs, Missouri. His poems have been or will be published in New Letters, Bridge Eight, South Dakota Review, Fourth & Sycamore, and TYPO, among many others. His first collection, Fall Risk, is available through Glass Lyre Press.

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Scott Sullivan