Postcards from the Imagination

For this week's poetry workshop assignment, we've been asked to write a poem in meter about a place. This is my place.

I was nine years-old and a huge fan of Cyndi Lauper when she decided to film the video for Time After Time in my weird little hometown. The picture is a screen capture from the video. That's Main Street, Wharton, New Jersey, circa 1984. On the right is Betty's Department Store. The Corner Super Market (aka 'The Corner Store') is on the left. It was another world. We lived up the block, and I remember my mother sending me to the store when I was as young as five with a few dollars and a note. I'd give the note to the store's owner, and he'd send me home with a bag of groceries and change. I can't tell you how many loaves of Wonder Bread or how many packs of True Blue I fetched from this corner.

Just out of view are the town library, and across the street from it our only gas station. The pumps were on the sidewalk, and customers pulled up to the curb to fill their tanks. In the video, there's a scene—right after the diner scene—in which Cyndi runs away from her boyfriend and hides in a doorway. It's the doorway of the gas station, and you can see her running between the storefront and one of the pumps. Somehow I convinced my mother to take me out at 2 a.m. so we could watch the filming of that scene. It was incredibly cold, and there wasn't really much to watch, but I was in junior pop star heaven.

You can watch the entire video in the extended post.