Jeffrey Hecker

Sears, Roebuck, and Co., 1934

Shoppers from the Dust Bowl, none reading Tender Is the Night,
seeking Westinghouse refrigerators, find Roebuck
greeting folks at storefront and ask if he’s Sears. Roebuck
responds no I’m Roebuck. They ask where Sears is. Roebuck
responds Sears died twenty years ago, I’m Roebuck.
Everybody is disappointed, extremely, even Sears, especially Roebuck.
Brookfield Zoo grand-opens, features reptile house. Roebuck
and visitors can’t stop envisioning Smoothwell Electric Irons so stop by Sears
on way home. Roebuck asks may he help find something, anything. Is this Sears
they ask your signage hangs too high up and snow blows
so we don’t know where we are. This is Sears, Roebuck
responds, but I’m Roebuck. Sears is gone. We’ll try Wieboldt’s,
one snaps, and all creep like common wall lizards out of Sears past Roebuck.

JEFFREY HECKER is author of Rumble Seat (San Francisco Bay Press, 2011) and the chapbooks Hornbook, Instructions for the Orgy, and Ark Aft. Recent work appears in Posit, South Dakota Review, and Yalobusha Review. A fourth-generation Hawaiian-American, he teaches at The Muse Writers Center and reads for Quarterly West.