Sunday poetry: "Ghost Town Pantoum"

When I was growing up in Fullerton, there was an abandoned building on the edge of downtown that always confounded me when I rode by. It was in an awkward location for drivers -- at the bottom of a brief dip in the road, which meant that you might accelerate right past unless you were looking for it in advance -- and it had the dusty, faded look of a place whose heyday resided in a few people's memories. Evidently, it had been a small grocery store, as evidenced by the barely visible Carnation Ice Cream sign painted in the bottom right corner. That Carnation sign was what mesmerized me. How many people had once gone through the front door, seeking a treat on a hot day? Did any children taste their first bite of vanilla in the shade outside? Looking at that parched logo, I reduced the building's history to two simple phases: Once, joy had taken place there, and now the joy was gone. The remnants of that corporate image on the wall served as an memorial.

I find buildings fascinating. They are all empty canvases, waiting for emotions to load them with color. Years ago, when I pushed my daughter around the neighborhood in a stroller, I kept a running commentary about the houses that we passed. Almost all of them were silent and closed from the outside; as I've noted in another blog entry, neighborhoods tend to be private places. Here, we approached a two-story house with a car in the driveway. How giddy did the owner of that car feel when he or she first saw the house for sale? Who lived in that upstairs bedroom, and what was the most exhilarating moment that had ever taken place in it? Perhaps its occupant had opened a college acceptance letter, kissed a loved one for the first time, recovered from a debilitating illness. Now, here was a one-story house with a gravel yard and an American flag draped over the porch. The owner who displayed it must have felt patriotic. On 9/11, did the bedroom inside the house reverberate with sobs? Someone else would move into the house one day, and that person have no idea what had been said or felt inside of it. The house would be a canvas again, ready to be filled.

We spend our lives passing by the traces of lives. Every house, every business, every street has hosted the gamut of human feelings: jubilation, sorrow, fear, reassurance, beginnings and endings and everything in between. I am thinking now of the 2001 Mexican film Y Tu Mama Tambien, in which the soundtrack periodically goes silent while a voiceover narrator points out what happened in the same locations years ago. Is the narrator meant to be God's voice? Perhaps; we can imagine that if God looks at any location on Earth, He (or She) is mourning others' tragedies while acknowledging our wellness. There are no happy or sad spots on Earth, only spots where happiness and sadness have taken place. We may personally attach emotion to a particular location, but that emotion resides in us, not in the location.

My poem this week in the Journal of Radical Wonder is "Ghost Town Pantoum," and I was about to call it a happy poem in a sad location before I stopped myself. Yes, the characters in the poem are enjoying themselves; they walk hand in hand through a ghost town (maybe a tourist trap), kiss by the jail, and in general take in the sights. Is a ghost town a sad place? Like all places, it's hosted sadness. There is a jail, of course. Crimes were committed here. Saloons brought their share of trouble, at least in the pioneer days. Then again, the beds show ample evidence of use, and the medicine show posters once glowed fresh and bright -- a promise of a rollicking afternoon. Someone was lucky, many times before, to be in this prairie town. As for us, we get a kiss out of it, maybe even an ice cream at the gift shop. We're lucky to be here now.