Poem: Ghosts of Nanticoke

Diamond's Candy Shoppe, October 30 2004. Closed since 2011.

I can still smell the candy in Caszh's store

sugar and flavorings permeating the air

The meat at Mike Weiss's grocery and butcher shop

where my grandmother would send me to pick up her weekly order

tick book in hand

On the walk to the Tiny Tot playground there was a yard with a gazing ball

that would shine bright as the sun

(twenty years later I bought one of my own)

I remember the day they paved the brick road in front of my grandmother's house

the bricks are still there, you can see them through the potholes

Woolworth's was a place where you could buy a bag of used stamps

Mexican jumping beans

a cheap 35 millimeter camera

and the latest KISS album

I saw Bambi at the State Theater, my first movie

and Star Wars a few years later

Chocolates from Diamond's

Comics from Koronkiewicz's

or MacDonald's newsstand

or Wadzinski's, once or twice

there was a brown and white horse and a bright red boar

that you could ride at the IGA 

Burgers and fries from Carroll's came with a little toy

(My father liked to eat at the Blue Bird sometimes)

The Card Shoppe was an archive of ancient cards and little porcelain statues

Mr. Bohinski would sell the cards at the price marked on them thirty years earlier

and then give a discount on top

while telling me stories of my grandfather courting my grandmother

when he was a foreman at the Duplin Mill

The Leader Store had a chain track system for taking money to the main office

Leventhal's displayed posters featuring the latest menswear styles from the 70s well into the 90s

gone, all gone

homes and vacant lots

empty buildings or new construction

living in memory until they are forgotten

ghosts whose stories will no longer be told