And the Time Is: Poems, 1958-2013

Welcome to Used-to-Was

233 Welcome to Used-to-Was After you pass the Orthodontic Center near the Chrysler dealership, you’ll see an Apostolic Church between two blocks of Civil War frame-houses with flags a-flutter from every porch, a neon sign that welcomes hunters, and all that’s left of an old Sunoco station gone to weeds and desolation near a second Apostolic Church that used to be a clinic for sick dogs. The locals call this village Used-to-Was because the way it is is not the way it was. Storefronts are boarded up for sale or rent except for one that offers cigarettes, cold beer, and porn, an office selling bail-bonds by appointment, and markets hawking shooting duds for hunters in deer season. The highway leading into town becomes Main Street, which has the same three stoplights that it’s had since the Depression. If all the lights are green your next time by, it takes two minutes—plus or minus— and you’re in and through and out. ...