Poets Mark Nowak and Diana Khoi Nguyen will be in conversation at PRoB sponsor White Whale Bookstore on April 14th at 7P.M. and on April 15th at 4:30 he’ll be delivering a craft talk at the University of Pittsburgh in the Cathedral of Learning Room 501.
These two prose poems are from “FALL,” the first of five seasonal abecedarian sequences in my new book, …AGAIN (Coffee House Press). “FALL” tracks the landscapes along the eastern stretch of Route 20—the longest road in America—during the Covid lockdown weeks leading up to the November 2020 Biden–Trump election. Rural roadsides rife with half-empty strip malls, Wastequip dumpsters, shuttered industries, and abandoned fields are rendered through what Soviet documentary filmmaker Dziga Vertov termed the Kino-Eye—the unblinking gaze of the camera. The other abecedarian sequences in …AGAIN extend this documentary impulse, recording in prose poems and photo-texts the January 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol, the racist mass shooting at Tops Friendly Markets in my hometown of Buffalo, the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, and other flashpoints of our ongoing MAGA era.
Owls out in the woods behind Office Depot. The odds have been against us from the onset. Obedience, obesity, alcohol, opioids. Owls out behind Ollie’s Bargain Outlet, too. Owls in the old oak trees out behind the boarded up Old Navy. Once the wind did blow through trees like these and we were here to witness them waver. Overcast clouds. Old effervescent decaying crops. October’s over and so is All Hallows Eve. Cornstalks and gourds on the ground in the dimming daylight. Maybe we’re somewhere in northern Ohio or on the shores of Lake Erie or Lake Ontario or any other ordinary place where once we held each other like only we could hold each other. Sure it was ending, it would end. Sure the shopping malls would close forever. No more overtime and only so much overdraft protection. Everyone reading this now is eventually going to die. Just ask the owls, the ones in the woods out behind the abandoned Old Spaghetti Factory. We’re cooked. Meth maybe. Frozen fish sticks and Banquet Turkey Pot Pies from the Dollar Tree. Vodka. OxyContin. In the pine grove out behind the shuttered Old Country Buffet. Just listen to the owls.
A few northern flickers, a red-bellied woodpecker. An empty original Doritos bag, not that Cool Ranch kind, just the regular ones. We remember what we remember. Residue. Road rage. America is becoming more and more American. It’s the routine by now, really. The egrets have migrated for the winter. We’re just north of the house whose turret used to be a Tory prison. Just down the road from the graveyard where soldiers from the American Revolution have long been buried. Abandoned cinder blocks, barbed wire, three rusting Rolling Rock cans. Mud and brush sticking to my rubber boots. Another right wing Supreme Court judge. Revenge is ruthless. Dollar General announces it’ll open another Dollar General between the two Family Dollars next year. A sale on Red Barron Classic Crust frozen pizza. Red-winged blackbirds in the marsh behind the Dress Barn. Redlined neighborhoods. The long-shuttered grist mills and paper mills along Stony Kill Creek. Maybe someday a Shake Shack will replace the shuttered Radio Shack. Please retweet.
Excerpted from AGAIN by Mark Nowak, published by Coffee House Press, ©2026 by Mark Nowak. All Rights Reserved.
