by Jared Beloff
I Came to This Walmart Parking Lot to Fight God
The Walmart closed down three years ago
It’s a boarded up hostility and we’re looking
At each other and the clusters of weeds
Frozen together in clumps in the pavement
Under the parking lot lights that still come on
Every night, orange and unnatural.
My mom worked here into her 70’s
Collecting carts in the winter.
My pockets are empty with everything
This place has taken from me, my mouth
With rotted teeth, my trunk full of what
I could take from the one three towns over
and every cashier looked at me like god just take it
God just get outta here, god fucking dammit
God, you owe me so much more than this
You owe me fists that burn across the knuckles
And truth that soothes like the stuff
My mother rubbed into my chest like a
Warning to illness. Like a warning to loss
My child will kill you, my child will love better than you
My child is my child is my blessed is mine
My child is burying me and burning my Walmart vest
You can tell I grew up tacky because the fake
Engagement ring I wear to this fight is as big as a skating rink
with glass as shiny as the shattered
Window on the pavement
I am drunk and want to fight something
That has never ever had to experience
What it’s like to have nothing to lose.
Lauren Parker is a fourth generation female breadwinner descended from male charlatans, and thus has grown up to become a very educated liar. She is a writer, zine maker, and visual artist and has written for the Toast, Strange Horizons, The Racket, Xtra Magazine, Catapult, and Autostraddle. Her work focuses on the intersection of class, queerness, and the occult.
She’s the author of the poetry collection We Are Now the Thing in the Woods (Bottlecap Press, 2023), Dark Way Down (Animal Heart Press, 2025), and Spells for Success (Simon Element, 2025). She has a newsletter, Do You Want to Do Some Witchcraft?
Jared Beloff is the author of Who Will Cradle Your Head (ELJ Editions, 2023) and the co-editor of Poets of Queens 2(Poets of Queens, 2024). His work can be found at AGNI, Baltimore Review, Image Journal, Pleiades and elsewhere. He is the Editor in Chief of Porcupine Literary. He is a teacher who lives in Queens, NY with his wife and two daughters. You can find him on his website www.jaredbeloff.com. IG: @Jared_W_Beloff Bluesky: @readinstead.bsky.social