‘Spoken Roadside by the Mall’

Ni Petrov is an artist whose work examines the complexities within everyday situations and the overlooked patterns of urban life. Working from candid moments, he employs digital manipulation, introducing cut-outs, glitches, and pixel distortions, to transform familiar scenes. This approach foregrounds themes of isolation and considers how digital overlays shape contemporary perception.

Spoken Roadside by the Mall

Born in 2007 means inheriting the aftertaste of things:

recession, opioids, school shootings, Marvel movies

already getting tired, America sitting at fifteen percent battery

for most of my life. Back home, the evenings mostly happen

in parking lots; Braum’s glowing beside an empty storefront,

lifted trucks circling Sonic, somebody playing Morgan Wallen

loud enough for the loneliness to become everybody’s problem.

The church signs warn about Revelation between ads for

personal injury lawyers. Even God here feels commercially zoned.

We grew up under fluorescent light: Homeland aisles, QuickTrip

roller grills, the blue fish-tank glow of Walmart at midnight, teachers

calling us resilient because the Wi-Fi’s out again, while somebody’s

brother overdosed behind the baseball fields. I knew men

with ruined backs at forty, girls talking about pregnancy like it was

maybe a way out,,boys filming TikToks in feed store parking lots

while the wind carried fertilizer and dead grass for miles.

Sometimes, at night, I just drive, past the Baptist megachurch,

past trailers flickering blue with television light, past the Loves

where old men smoke quietly under a sky so big it makes ambition

feel stupid, past the Casey’s clerk microwaving wings at one in the morning,

past the billboard outside Tecumseh where a smiling family promises

JESUS IS THE ANSWER,

past the movie theater still advertising films nobody saw months ago,

past somebody crossing the Walmart parking lot, pushing a stroller

with one hand and dragging a case of bottled water through the wind

with the other.

Paul Potts is a poet from Oklahoma. He was awarded the Jim Spurr Poetry Prize, won the 2026 The Howl Poetry Contest, and was a finalist for the inaugural Rowayat Poetry Prize. Outside of writing, he enjoys playing jazz on both the drums and vibraphone.