Fiction? | Non Fiction?




New Year's Routine

Backwards I looked through the year as we slid into a fresh January.
The sky was cold but the immediate air was stinging hot
with burning wood discarded by the antique dealer now
cheering in the New Year in Mexico.

In that particular space of history,
my brother had this huge barn basement apartment
along a road that pierced snake-like through
country land tended by God-fearing farmers.

We stood outside, framed in a stretching
forever sky. Kids passed joints, kids huddled
near the fire, and some told jokes while plastic
beer cups shook in their numb fingers. A sad tiny
boombox cried with the Grateful Dead or maybe
it was Marley. It whined incessantly
and I looked around for
anything that might resemble the coming 2002.
But everything
looked the same.

I remember scanning every phrase, listening to every smile,
searching like a beggar through indiscernible eyes for a single sign that
this white-lit ball descending in New York City would usher in
a clean set of chances, a full slate of opportunities.
But I only felt one whisper, familiar and hated, in my ear, and it said
what I no longer wanted to know.
Hours later, after emerging from the couch as
revilers laid strewn, in drunken slumber,
around the floor, near the sagging
Christmas tree, I stood inside a window. Peeked through the
sunshine and into the heart of the matter, but
without satisfaction. I took careful steps not to drive the
crunched champagne glass further into the carpet and walked
away into the dead of day. The ignition squawked and I was off.
I was headed back to the same life.