The New Walmart
You are one of 200 people lined up in the dark chill
of a Birmingham suburb waiting for the HR team to
come outside from the inside of an almost finished
Walmart that has advertised openings for 45 associates:
clerks, stockers, loading dock attendants. Those around
you blow into their hands, keep each other company.
Haven’t worked since they closed the sock factory mentions
a woman dressed in a not warm looking Disneyland sweatshirt.
Yeah, they moved to Africa or someplace her companion says.
a middle aged man three back from the ladies complains,
Vietnam, they went to Vietnam. I thought we won that war.
as he zips up his faded fatigue jacket. A cute blond from
a Birmingham TV station is standing in front of the mobile
unit. You can see she is cold underneath her fur lined parka.
She’s talking to a “suit” with a clipboard. He keeps saying
how great this will be for the town: 45 jobs paying more
than minimum wage–Yeah, says the guy in front of you,
$8 less than I was making on the loading dock at Mason’s
Furniture before it closed. He spits his Red Man juice into
a paper cup. You think of the 45 lucky ones. Many of them
you will never see. They will unload trucks, stock shelves,
run Bissell floor sweepers down the aisles at midnight.
They will work hard. Work hard to get back of the ladder
to the ceiling of the American Dream. The door opens
as the HR team walks out. Another guy in a suit says,
We’ll only take the first 100 today. The rest of you try
tomorrow at 8. You throw your empty coffee cup into the
recycle, put your gloves back on and walk into the morning.
Robert Halleck lives in Del Mar, CA. He is a member of San Diego’s Not Dead Yet Poets. His poems have appeared in Chiron, The Paterson Literary Review, Third Wednesday, The San Diego Poetry Annual and a number of other places. He is a poetry reviewer for the Split Rock Review.
The Literary Forest Poetry Magazine 