Found Poem

FOUND POEM / Howard Nemerov after information received in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 4 ? 86 The population center of the USA Has shifted to Potosi, in Missouri. The calculation employed by authorities In arriving at this dislocation assumes That the country is a geometric plane, Perfectly flat, and that every citizen, Including those in Alaska and Hawaii And The District of Columbia, weighs the same; So that, given these simple presuppositions, The entire bulk and spread of all the people Should theoretically balance on the point Of a needle under Potosi in Missouri Where no one is residing nowadays But the watchman over an abandoned mine Whence the company got the lead out and left. "It gets pretty lonely here," he says, "at night." The Missouri Review · 72 ...