Foot Locker, Street-level, Full of Everyone’s Problems
by Cynthia Belmont
Because life is full of kid problems and man problems,
because the daycare is called We Love Kids which is a plus
but what about after that when they have to come home
is what the woman on the phone is worried about,
she isn’t buying shoes, just on the phone for a long time.
She also has man problems, her man doesn’t seem to notice
a 15-year-old girl, she says. A 15-year-old girl.
The little boy in the aisle is spread-eagled because he has
a cotton candy problem and his mama, she’s mad, she has
man problems too. Her man is staring silently out the front window
at all the guys on the sidewalk passing time, like someone’s
going to buy shoes for him and maybe she is.
My problem is a shoe problem, which is that I live on
a dirt road way out in the country and I don’t spend
too much time in Foot Locker and all the shoes
have white soles or black soles and my road is so red,
the dust I kick up will definitely fuck up these kicks.
The shoes have their own problem even though
they’re a gorgeous bouquet of neon called Free this
and Air Max that and Flyknit, which is that on another level
that is not street-level but below, everything in this store
is made of petroleum and it’s going to run out
or we’re going to kill the climate or whichever comes first,
but nobody in here seems to be addressing this problem
at the moment. This is no Roberts’ Shoes—old neighborhood
shop on Lake whose sign reads Happy Feet for All the Family.
This is Foot Locker and the Nikes in here are not for running
but for walking real slow because nobody’s going to make you
go faster, hell no, not in these shoes, these shoes are
a hot center, they might or might not have an answer
for the man saying to his friend, Hey hey,
hey I didn’t do it, they thought I did it but I didn’t
do it, I didn’t know what to say so it was like fuck this,
fuck it man, it was like I didn’t know no other words
so all I could do was curse.
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