A fort surrendered to the British in 1778 gives way to
to a Square surrendered to heroin in 2017
under perpetual gray skies in the Saddest Place in America.
Across the Square, Boscov’s department store boasts
seventy percent off sales, ten-dollar sweaters, buy one, get one free mascaras
under the glare of fluorescent lights and the drone of light rock music in a store
that was once as elegant as Saks, but now reeks of rinky-dink and cheap perfume
in the Saddest Place in America.
The Susquehanna River, whose banks are strewn with filth-colored, ice-covered rocks,
thunders ashore adding grit to grime, a dirt-streaked monochrome
merging earth with sky, in the Saddest Place in America.
Will it pause to swallow everyone and everything, except the dealers it is too weak to bully?
Or will it rage and conspire with never-ending rain to strike again
at the mansions that overlook it in the Saddest Place in America?
Coal-mining greed, child-peddling greed, drug-dealing greed;
greed always wins
in the Saddest Place in America.
