Nowheretown
Ray Karpovage
I’m from a place called Waretown
some call it Nowheretown
and they’re probably right.
We’ve got a WaWa
where you can buy a pack a’ smokes
and an Italian sub heavy on the mayo
hold the oil and vinegar
at least that’s how I like mine.
The rest of the world has never had a sandwich.
There’s a friendly neighborhood
nuclear power plant
just beyond the edge of town.
Our taxpayers voted against it
so they put it there
and called us NIMBY (Not In My BackYard).
If it ever blew we would have
folded like the forgotten ash
of dying old man’s filter-less Pall Mall.
We woke to 7am test warnings
that called like seagulls on steroids.
We all had our evacuation routes
sketched red on a map.
The old people say that the son of Satan
was born to these woods long ago deep in Jersey
some say he still sleeps on the
brown needles of the pines
and whittles out the devil’s work
in the barren rusty swamps.
He was the thirteenth child of a witch
who cursed his soul and being
born with bat wings he flew from her womb
up the chimney and into the night.
Personally I’ve never seen him.
This is my town where we dig with our
toes in the mud for clams
and sell them to restaurants
3 cents for chowder and 7 cents for cheery-stones.
We have 3 churches and 3 liquor stores
3 bars and a video store.
When short on cash we could always chop
The copper tubeing from underneath
a Bennie’s summer home
and take it to the recycling plant.
When that Bennie would come back
with his red farmers tan we would all laugh
and yell “Bennie go Home!”
and he always would, Thank God
for this is the Devil’s country.
