The Dollar General in Hoosick Falls, New York, is six-tenths of a mile north of Dollar Tree. Tops Friendly Market is three-tenths of a mile north from there. That’s the northern landscape nowadays. Never mind the naysayers. It’s anti-American. It’s in our nervous system. You’re born with a choice between Taki’s Intense Nacho and Taki’s Nacho Explosion. Now it’s your chance to choose. It’s the beginning of November. We can’t be nonchalant about it anymore. Mass shootings, Neanderthals, neophytes, some news from NASA trending on Twitter. Nix it. There’s so much naked anger. So many nightmares, nervous breakdowns, night sweats, nursing home deaths. Maybe there’s a new moon sometimes. Maybe an anniversary gift from Neiman Marcus or Nordstrom Rack before they shutter, too. Night stays here longer now. The night watchmen have so much more to watch. Just watch the news. It’s streaming on Netflix. And there’s a new season in a series about doctors in your old neighborhood, too. You walked by the actors’ trailers all the time, and once they watched your dog shit right there and then they watched you pick it up. New Amsterdam. Nothing else is new. Even in Neverland. Never say never. You never said Simon says.
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Mark Nowak’s books include Shut Up Shut Down, Coal Mountain Elementary, Social Poetics, and …AGAIN (forthcoming), all from Coffee House Press. He recently edited Coronavirus Haiku (Kenning Editions, 2021) and wrote an introduction to Celes Tisdale’s When the Smoke Cleared: Attica Prison Poems and Journal (Duke University Press, 2022). A native of Buffalo, Nowak is founding director of the Worker Writers School (https://www.instagram.com/workerwritersschool/).