The Last Sears And Roebuck Poem by Raj Dronamraju

The racks are not filled immediately and some now remain permanently empty in the last Sears and Roebuck
The terminally ill patient is given less and less medication

The remaining three or four employees do the work of the original nine or ten
The first to be laid off are already a lifetime past this
The last to go drag their feet
And sneak out for food and cigarette breaks

What did you ever do for me?
The future is made clear in boarded up storefronts and empty shuttered malls
Here now, they've stopped vacuuming the carpets
The pretense is past tense

There is a plastic sheet covering the empty wall once filled with sport shoe models in the last Sears and Roebuck
The pictures of the goods Sears sold are like hieroglyphics
They won't print that catalog again
The catalog is soaked with tears