Ghosts
How often we navigate by what is no
�longer there. Turn right where the post
�office used to be. She lives in a condo
�above where the bakery blew sweet
�yeasty smells into the street. A nail
�salon now.
�
Kelsey Hayes had a factory there
�on Livernois where our neighbors
�worked. A foundry spat out metal
�where the strip club spits neon
�now and loud skanky music
�into the night.
�
Rows of little cheap houses replaced
�by a few McMansions. Where did
�all those people go? The workers
�in factories, in tool and dye shops,
�the shoemakers and tailors, mom
�and pop eateries?
�
You can be plunked down in Anywhere
�U.S.A. and see the same row of stores
�Target, Walmart, Gap, Toys-R-Us.
�Exit the superhighway: McDonalds,
�
Taco Bell, Burger King, Hardees,
�you haven’t moved.
�
That’s where the school was: see,
�it’s condos now. That’s the church
�the parish closed to pay for priests’
�sex. China got the shoe factory.
�Urban renewal turned the old neighbor-
�hood to dust.
�
Some things we make better and some
�are destroyed by greed and bad
�politics. We live in the wake
�of decisions we didn’t share in,
�survivors of a vast lethal typhoon
�of power.
�
�
