Merril D. Smith

The first square is empty, walk
on the beach, envision a city,
build it, they will come,

ferry to railroad, Philadelphia day-trippers,
vacationers, escapers, walk the Boardwalk,
it’s the place to be seen—

women in diamonds and furs—turn a corner, jump
a square, find the bootleggers and bookies,
make a deal,
over there, a new hotel.

On another square, see my grandfather
in a black and white photo swagger
across the boards, hat atop his head,
his gambling connections seem almost quaint.

Continue your ramble round the squares,
my parents honeymoon while soldiers train
and find romance in WWII.

Move on—more squares hold
the Miss America pageant and union conventions,
Frank Sinatra, a diving horse at Steel Pier,

the city rises and falls, houses are torn down
to construct casinos, the gaudiest of all,
a façade fixtured with fool’s gold,

so many squares are filled by cons, not pros,
corruption greases the game with slime
the slimiest robber-baron,
would be a red-capped king,
line-up to roll the dice
take a chance you will be paid—
but now

he locks the Community Chest, carries it
to Florida, he is the monopoly,
he grasps the Stay Out of Jail card,
waves it like a flag.

Merril D. Smith is an independent scholar and Pushcart-nominated poet. She writes from southern New Jersey. Her work has been published widely in poetry journals and anthologies. Her full-length poetry collection, River Ghosts (Nightingale & Sparrow Press), was Black Bough Poetry’s December 2022 Book of the Month. Find her at Bluesky: @merrildsmith.bsky.social; Instagram: mdsmithnj; Blog: merrildsmith.org

This poem appeared in Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age — Summer 2025, published by The Chaos Section Poetry Project. We’ll be featuring each poem from the collection individually in the weeks ahead. You can read the full collection or download a free PDF of the chapbook here.