a parallel life in franklin, nj

sometime between 7:42 a.m. on jan. 2 and 8:14 a.m. on jan. 3
our paths nearly crossed in that your feet and mine
both stomped up the steep blue-blaze trail nearest the river at Esopus Meadows
Me, dropping crumbs of Bocce’s Bakery turkey cranberry dog treats
You, dropping a folded receipt that announced:
At 10:35 and 8 seconds on the night of dec. 30
At a Walmart in Franklin NJ
You purchased:
1 book ($5.38)
1 Red Bull ($5.58)
The Purge on DVD ($5.00)
and an external keyboard ($42.97)
You paid $65.00 cash and received $2.17 in change

I looked up Franklin NJ when I got home and found
that it’s known as “the Fluorescent Mineral Capital of the World”
it is home to the Franklin Mineral Museum
brimming with geodes, ordinary exterior and sparkling within
The Sterling Hill Mine & Museum of Fluorescence, a rocky neon-scape
(which, forgive me, is technically in Ogdensberg)
AND The Gingerbread Castle (technically in Hamburg)
where on the top-most cookie turret in silvery spray paint it once read BBTM
which a cursory internet search
revealed might reference a 2015 album by The Weeknd
or a blood bank and transfusion machine, when used in conjunction
neither of which evoke a gingerbread castle
even in my non-linear cookie-obsessed mind

I calculated that,
although the external keyboard was the last item rung up
it must have been the first reason for your trip to Walmart at 10:35 and 8 seconds p.m. on dec 30
because my objective set of eyes subjected the other items to scrutiny
and decided they alone would not likely have necessitated
a late-night trip to Walmart during a pandemic

because I remember the desperation I felt
when my computer keyboard failed, one key at a time
along the asdf row several years back
and how I painstakingly typed sense into things by copying and pasting
the missing letters from web sites into my nonsensical words
until an exasperated girlfriend used her parents’ amazon prime account
to express mail me an external keyboard
which I used for two years, then no longer needed
when the computer self-destructed more completely
shortly after our relationship

Later I wondered, did you drink the Red Bull that night??
perhaps to fuel an evening of watching The Purge,
then the subsequent hours of not being able to sleep
having been deeply disturbed by watching The Purge
which many Rotten Tomatoes reviewers agree is deeply disturbing
in addition to being one of the worst films ever made

CLOSER

this summer a rebel speed boat 

raced beneath the moon 

most nights

low pleasure bass against the

man made man shaped

man waves

I did not feel the future, then, and only felt

the past as pulse

insomuch as it had brought me to

that beach to shiver

looking to the moon

I risked her scooping out in me 

reflection 

egg seed basket cove,

with space enough to slide beneath

and catch the leaks 

that’s the generosity I pray for

lines between the rocks 

and stars

A Metaphor

It is almost metaphorical, a walk on the first day of the year.

The one-step-at-a-timeness of it, 

how the breath animates and 

invigorates the body, the quiet

of winter just before a storm

the sense of leaving something behind in the old year, 

the way a path offers

new-to-you views

of a world you’ve only seen in passing.

Leaving home and coming back

unchanged but also different.

You cannot unwind the steps you’ve taken 

any more than

you can unwind time.

The metaphor is there,

I think, but

I fear it is too on the nose to be good poetry.

JANetc

i do remember the rabbit blood on the snow 

and I imagine where the hawk could have gone 

and this all takes place in January in my mind. 

Why wasn't I there. It feels like I was. Should I say this out loud,*

It's all taken place in January a slow livid drag

across the snow You're beautiful but ur gonna fade away

but not in January. I've never left. 

I'm still there pretending to be in those heart beaten days

Painting walls white in my wool socks praying for a beginning

this place is a work in progress the office floor just needs to be stripped. 

How can I be this. More. 

The shrine covered in snow me dragging my feet spilt minestrone soup

that keeps my hands warm.

I notice and try explaining the foot prints that I walk in hoping to feel them. 

I'm still there in the attic and on the back porch smoking a cigarette jumping 

to conclusions and hoping this is the time that the planet dies 

wondering if there is asbestos in the shellac of the floor I stop scraping. 

* "Maybe this is one time it will always be that second to third week of January." 

The first winter that cost a lot of money and the diesel was too

much for the collective bank account and retirement fund dissolution projections, 

or so I've imagined.