I First Saw Scranton
...and did not unpack
my life
Iron--    ic  
as if always
meant to be a rusted ruin
I first saw Scranton
Not much of a view
beyond the smoldering mountains of the culm
dumps, decrepit
mills, of once...
prosperous coal
city in denial  
decay of Great mansions--abandoned
on the Hill    
away
from clapboard and spit hovels
of miners
in the barren
mud beside the river
below
and I remember thinking:

"How can I ever live here?" 

I own one of those hovels now
48 years-- under foot and harnessed
in the stays 
Just another in a string of small
sad 
cities'
people
so used
and
waiting
to be
covered up
once again by heaviness--
Its sin  
in the mercy of snow...

Glistening through shafts of sunlight, I spy the silvery dragonfly,

Hovering above the clovered knoll,

Swaying like wheat in speckled sun.

Cantering up grassy hills, away from the stream,

The bleating goats exchange existential crises,

Brushing past the whispering tulips ablaze in the sunset.

Behind me,

In the shade of oaks, in spiraling dusts,

Decaying logs half buried in the windbreak

Rekindle and animate in the orange beams.

I stand up and sip my beer, as the stars blink and stutter.

A snowy owl whooshes past, wishing for rain.

Somebody loves me.

Seek out the skeletons on every surface
Your no fun if you go to bed first
Those days were dark & merciless
You recited lies to my pretty face
I forgave you;
Lord knows we both sin
My fortune predicts I won't win
Cause you're already tasting that drip;
And you crave the bitterness

You can't cure him with charisma
And your love won't liberate him
So say your prayers till your voice is strained
100 Hail Marys won't alter this game

-Kellie A. Scranton

I let you go
to Philadelphia
I let you go
thirteen goin' on “life”
to your momma-- (God rest her-- and keep you
--from wherever she is)
to your father in Philly
outa the picture

Sheepish in the doorway of my classroom
back again
one last time--

Say good-bye, kid, to your short stay in Scranton
a town that can't rhyme
whose name falls over its own misery
No use for outsiders

“Where's your book?
Found your binder in the rain
Soggy protest to school's demands?
Of course it's yours
I checked, ya know”

"No way!"

Desk's been empty, three weeks now
Still, gotta ask
“Whacha doin?
Where ya been?”

“Khmir,
I'm sorry for your loss....”
Thirty seconds shares our grief
Thirty seconds for your future's-- all I got

“Listen to your teachers!
Do your work!
Please-- be okay?”

Khmir
in your wooly black coat-- like a bear
like a dare
shruggin and dancin in the doorway
of the “show”

Homework? Aint happenin'
But one paper, though
on why--
YOU-- should be president

and I almost vote for you

“Some people are never far away...”

I am thinking this--
bouncing tipsy on pool floaty
at my daughter's new home
in 'burbs of Philly
Sipping wine
on a pool floaty
thinking this--
  
abstractly

Sipping wine
in odd peace
on a pool floaty
cool and soft, the water
Cicadas scour the air

...Knowing it's not true....

I had watched them from my porch
leaving –
since the day they came
They –
and the robins too, headed south now
tumbling in their groups
that garble time
that sketch horizon
with a maze of staggered lines
Watching
geese--
their backs and wings gleam
in golden V
across the sunset

They are honking as they rise, raucous
from river in their flight
My daughters do the same  
Migrating south from Scranton
waving, honking til their cars have turned the corner
out of sight

...on a pool floaty
fully clothed
I watch them
drenched in the darkening sky
tasting salty streams

Intoxicating sounds
their laughter
their voices--
How I love....

cicada droning
in the lush of background green

I will keep this moment clutched
to me
all I have of them
between these moments

I live between moments
of nothing and everything

Burgundy, the color of a dress I’ve never worn
to an occasion that never occurred

Velvet lined
coffin
Where lies the violin
There lies its song

The heart of fiddle strings
that bare of arms
That heart that sings, speaks, no, yells
to the hands that can’t respond!
to a mind that can’t remember
I was drowning in some future
not a violinist’s

“Alive with Pleasure”
read the billboard slogan for cigarettes
behind the happy couple
running out into their future

Forcing the hand of marriage
Waving goodbye to my life
from a rooftop in Scranton
as the wind hauled my laundry three city blocks
dumping my unders on Saint Luke’s sills
sailing my sheets up Wyoming Avenue

I lay on the tar and pebble roof
watching pigeons swirl
listening to traffic pass on the street below
The moment you know you’ve made the mistake
you can’t return from....

Wherever my towels have blown?
I wish them well....

I really should be studying, I know,
but I can’t help logging in.
I’ve done some work today already, though,
would one episode be a sin?
Just to check on the friends with the apartment and the purple door,
or maybe the ones from the Scranton office who sell paper.
I also want to know what Eleven is up to,
and definitely Rory and Lorelai Gilmore.
I’ll curl up with a blanket here and i’ll make some popcorn later.
I think this was a good decision — it does say “Recommended For You.”

Seldom seen in the stew of Scranton skies
But there it is
a rubber band of fog  
smudged across black distance...
Myriad-multitudes
They are truly there
Each burning ball
gathered beyond my imagination
by the Moon Mother
Who scrubs the faces
of her little stars

When you can't go outside in the cold
Cause it hurts your bones;
And you've caused self inflicted mayhem
On every surface of your skin
When the night is your only cherished friend
It comforts your deceiving soul
And sings you a fast tempo lullaby

-Kellie A Scranton

no way you could know that
I have driven US 80, when
the Pennsylvania Turnpike
was considered a legitimate deathtrap,
and 80 was a god-send

shuttling back and forth tween
Cleveland (o/k/a The  Burning River City) and NYC,
in the crappiest weather man
could just about tolerate,
and 84 was just an
incomplete dream then,
so we one day,
could skip that idlewild,
Passaic, New Jersey,
back in '69

indeed the Pocono deer that
came through the windshield,
luckily, legs first,
after smashing the radiator,
that I dragged by hooves
to the side of the road,
still well recall, for that
was the first time I touched a
living thing dying in my hands

when I broke my arm in
Tannersville one summer night,
they drove me to the big city,
Scranton,
woo hoo,
cause the break was bad ,
they need to operate,
so they left me there,
w/o any anesthetic,
in the hallway(!) till morn
and a "see ya later kid,"
how they did things in a tough place
known as central Penna.,
which now I think of
semi-fondly as the place where
a piece of me was left buried
and I am still alive to swell tell

but people were tougher back then,
even me, a city 13 year old boy,
cause I had dreams of  girls,
wonderful girls, who had powers in their bodies
that could do things to me in the Poconos forests,
that were unthinkable (for them) after crossing
over the Hudson River,
and that was plenty
anesthetizing

so dem my bona fides,

and Now I Will Write
just another overdue thank you
for Balise, who writes
with a coolest heated blazing detachment,
and then at the very end,
IN ALL CAPS,
smacks you on the head
via the heart

writin'  
of
this n' that,
Mass and men,
worshipping a river called the Lackawanna,
the bleakness of a not quite grimy poverty,
(I worked in  Republic Steel warehouse)
that made grey a bright color,
and the sun was invisible from October to May,
in a world where people PROUDLY,
clung to their guns and religion,
(you arrogant out of touch Harvardian snob,
Mr. Obama prima donna),
you had to see it to believe it

of
herons and beer cans,
of parents and pain,
so exquisitely,
that I would gladly
drive to Tannersville again,
right now,
if I could, if I could,
yet learn that skill under her tutelage,
which by the by, is why some call me
still crazy, still crazy, after all those years,
crazy from a balise,
a wintry blizzard heating the readers eyes, and
who reads my footnotes
and thus
only this woman,
knows, better than she ever realized,
where his undulatin' poems come from...

Scranton has me wrapped
around its broken finger
I fell abruptly into the palm
of Philadelphia
with eager eyes
and shaking hands
but the boring consistency
of a quiet purgatory
is too easy to come home to
And truth be known,
I am no artist
I'm just an other
tired college student
with displaced anger,
alcohol poisoning
& a surplus of anxiety
thriving on a tethered
thread of hope some
sad boy with a guitar
gave me in high school
and it's wearing thin

She slumped by the archway of the Chapel,
Forlorn, beaten in fact;
She had come to these grounds from Plattsburgh,
(Cold, martial little city home to General Wood’s summer flings)
To lay a wreath she’d bought near the train station at Bayeux
Purchased from a women at a small shop table,
Who’d had the grace not to haggle over-much,
Knowing full well why someone would make such a purchase.
She’d hoped to lay it at her brother’s marker;
He’d been lost at Omaha, likely before he’d set foot on the sand
(She’d no ideas of such things at the time,
Death being a thing that happened to rabbits
Their old shepherd chased down in the back yard,
Or dolls beheaded courtesy of her younger brother)
But the plot number given to her with such confidence
By the young adjutant from the War Department
Had a name wholly unknown to her
(Where the information was bollixed she had no way of knowing,
Not that officialdom would be any more help to her,
With so many sons in Scranton,
So many husbands in Hamtramck,
So many fathers and brothers in the same boat)
And so she sat, overwhelmed with the distance she’d come,
The magnitude of her failure and its implications,
And the whole **** burden of simple humanity
When she was approached by an older man,
Who clearly resided nearby
(Why he was here less evident—the hush of the venue, perhaps,
Possibly some corporal he was indebted to).
He’d understood her predicament in an instant,
No doubt a scene he’d witnessed scores of times before,
Laissez-le sur un monument funéraire,
He crooned, patting her forearm
Ce n’est pas important, and he sauntered away.
She’d considered heeding his advice,
But she remained hostage
To some vestige of latter-day Babbitesque can-do,
And so she soldiered back toward the endless rows of marble,
Stretching out in endless parallel lines
As in some middle-school perspective perspective drawing
Without borders, without end.

I used to hang out in abandoned buildings.
Old machine shops with puddles of rainwater pooled up on the floor;
sun or star light visible between broken and failing rafter beams
and the holes in the ceiling and my eyes.
Sometimes there would be particle board hammered into the brick
where heavy glass windows once stood;
tacked all about with bright yellow and pink postings warning
people like me to stay out and to not trespass under penalty of law.
The warning signs made me nervous because I don’t like to get in trouble.
Sometimes I would notice abandoned spaces while
driving up route 11 - Scranton, Pennsylvania.
I would park and discern through google maps on how
to gain access to yet another relic of American industry before
Wall Street reinvented slavery and shipped the spirit
of the Rust Belt to Mexico and Bangladesh and China and
various sweatshops overseas.

I had a lot of spare time to walk up and down the Wyoming Valley, northeast PA,
looking for the abandoned skeletons of buildings
into which I could furtively enter and abide.
Friday night, long week, punch the clock, no plans - no problem.
It was me and my two feet,
a long walkabout winding through the annals of my memories,
maybe some take out for dinner and all is well.
Don’t get me wrong, I had friends.
I’ve been to many places and I’ve seen many things.
I’ve faced many hardships but I always found a
posse or a partner with whom I could abide in peace and cheerful community.
That is before I would up and leave them abandoned in the wreckage of
my slow motion odyssey of self destruction;
dusting the bones of my many friendships with the many
chem trails from the many jet planes from the many tickets booked
by my father to save me from the many demons gnawing on my neck and heart.
Goodbye florida. Good bye guam. Goodbye california.

Abandoned buildings are safe.
There is a comforting predictability in their steady dilapidation.
There are no standards of social etiquette by which to adhere.
There is no small talk through which manufactured smiles show their teeth.
There are no ****** expressions and body postures to monitor
and reflect back what adjustments in countenance and demeanor I must make.

My face was a Greco-Roman mask.
Stretched and dried out, suspended somewhere between a comedy and a tragedy.
My face is the furthest frontier of my soul song,
the outermost edge of my heart.
That through which sound passes.

day of the big extraction.
lower left molar
tooth number 18.
interesting chakra, that one.
sometimes a physical removal of energy is needed
to let the nadis breathe.
I got a double hernia repaired about a year ago.
anesthesia administered by St. Michael the Divine.
a whole granthi must have broken loose
while I was underneath the knife.
energetic knots all in a tangle in the sacral
burst into a cloud of scarabs and sanskaras
like a flock of a thousand white doves released
at a Louisiana Jazz Funeral.

the first time I sank into samadhi was late February 2021.
I was sitting in the lobby at Horizon Dental
third floor of the Guild building,  Wyoming avenue, Scranton, PA.
I was sipping coffee I got from the 1st floor
from the
Heaven and Earth Cafe
when my -
eyes rolled up into my skull
when my -
heart  buckled under the beauty
when my -
brain found its new home in a vat of warm static.
I felt like the Benedictine on the cross I got
from the christian trinket shop attached to the new cafe downstairs.
holy holy holy. glory be to god

this tooth has been giving me agita for two years
ever since the medicine
and the accident
and the hospital.
ever since I broke the Causal Egg.
novicaned
root canalled
capped with a cracked temporary
and now just a fractured stub of calcium
with three roots instead of two.

It only took a couple skillful shots to the face
before I couldn’t feel a thing.
except for twenty five minutes
of drilling
and cracking
and prying
and extracting the one thing that kept me grounded
when I was sitting in the common area of the 6th floor
of the CMC, Hill Section, Scranton, PA.

©️  Jordan Gee

I watched cars sail under bridges
and smiles fade in the distance
Graffitied buildings begging
questions like, why is it so
hard to make it out of the house
without having a panic attack?
Three hours from Philly to Scranton
Just three long hours with you
on my mind and I can hardly breathe
because the world looks so big
through wide windows
Tall trees and deep lakes
all around me, but stretches
of ugly highway are all I see
There's so much to love,
so much for me but I
can't seem to change my mind
I can't seem to leave your name behind

Love is a yellow shotgun shell sitting on a shelf.
Love is a kiss on the forehead and on each cheek.
Love is peeing with the door open
and conversations in red sweatshirts.
Love is borrowed sweatpants and back rubs,
and being too deep in conversation to watch the movie.
Love is staying out past when you said you would.
Love is 48 index cards and
one scoop of ice cream.
Love is a family affair-
a sister, two brothers,
laughing in the kitchen and
seriously watching football games.
Love is the massive American flag
standing tall in a Macey's parking lot.
Love is waiting in the car at the gas station
and asking for a key to the bathroom.
Love is Scranton, Pennsylvania
and Burbank, California.
Love is homemade CDs and driving mindlessly through the night,
holding hands in silence.
Love is a bouquet of dead roses
in a vase full of murky water.
Love is the empty feeling you get on Wednesday nights
and the pang in your heart when you drive past the local pizza place.
Love is checking the mailbox every day.
Love is missing you.
Love is an atomic bomb.

The Harvest of Life Exchanging Itself

     “May I help you?” – More busy in my voice than hurried. A woman points to a quart of peaches she's been studying.  “Sure of herself.” I had been thinking,  “She won't buy anything else.”
Such delicate fruit—one at a time they must be placed in the brown paper bags. I've gotten quick at it.  Then the Standard: “Couple of those are pretty hard yet; Leave 'em out overnight in that bag, and they'll be ready to eat... Anything else?”

     “No nothing more,” small shake of her head.

     Late afternoon at The Farmer's Night Market in Scranton-- the intense bustle of of the early day over –  with its frenzy of bills and change and bags; a new line of faces every sixty seconds, waiting to be waited on.  Questions, peering, turning the fruit to see if one side's as good as the other, and it always is as the Michaels sell only premium fruit at their stand, where I've been “City Help” for two years.

     “No, we won't have cider till after Labor Day when the Miltons come in.”  Funny, I'm starting to sound like a farmer – even know the apples by their different tastes, appearances, and order of ripeness.  There are summer apples, fall, and the winter keepers; and a smaller, rather homely variety, MacCowans, are the best for eating.  I like Cortlands myself.  They remind me of making pies with my mother – the smell of dough and apple skins – the little scavengers waiting for the cores

     The customers have thinned now, scurrying like loaded pack mules – off to their trunks and station wagons.  I can even read their minds!  They're planning dinners, canning pickles!  Roasting corn for cook-outs, planning novel ways to prepare the bounty.  I know these things.  I've been a customer for twenty years from mid-July till Thanksgiving.

     Wiping my sweaty forearms on my jeans, I try to get rid of the prickly-itch of peach fuzz – small price to pay for the afternoons's sweetness.  Then leaning back against some crates, I watch the edges of the canvas shelters flap – storm later?  This place, I was thinking, not much changed from the markets a hundred years ago-- the gathering of life to exchange itself.  We city folk – dependent, fume breathers and asphalt beaters.  Machine-like, silly with wealth or lack; paying, playing, dining out – driving our bad-*** cars toward some goal – never enough – just to wait for old age on the steps of “check day”  Not that farmers don't have their desperate years.  Weather can't be trusted, and there's always the hosts of gnawers, crawlers, and rotters – the unexpected that comes with living things whether cows or turnips.

     I've seen it here: life exchanging itself.  The early yellows and greens of lettuce, squash, beans, and berries; ripening to August corn, tomatoes, and feathery bunches of dill.  Then descent with cooler days to pears and apples, corn, and squash. Late September brings the Indian corn and pumpkins, cider, bushels of potatoes, frosted concord grapes, and zany gourds.

     With the return of Standard Time, come the bare bulbs that light the stands of produce.  At Ruth's the sign reads: “Order Your Capon Here.”  There are hams and roasts and sausage for stuffing.  The winter apples – “Stock up NOW!”  Ideas for holiday decorations; recipes exchanged.  Bushels and bushels for the canners!  And, one farmer sells those branches, heavy with scarlet winter berries for the city doors...  “We close the Wednesday before Thanksgiving”  I always buy those berries.

Good-byes are brisk and sweet – cold breath steams the air.  City and country marking their seasons –  their lives by the market.  The warm greetings of July, “So good to see you again!”
...Marking their lives.  Our children grow so much between the markets.  Generations exchange.  This co-op started eighty years ago, 1939.  For so long, it was the last and only, farmer-owned, open-air market in Pennsylvania.  

     Generations born; some pass or retire in the winter.  Nancy never seems any older than her smile.

     The vegetables always look the same – they're not.  They are the children of last year's veggies.  I suppose if I were to come here for the first time, I would think everything hereå has always been this way.  And, perhaps, I wouldn't be so wrong.  It really didn't seem so different or so long ago in late October when I first watched the farmers huddled around kerosene heaters in parkas, rubbing their hands together, drinking soup and coffee to warm them – stamping a little – pulling off their gloves, reluctant to handle the freezing change.

     “Can I help ya?”
     “Yes... Where's the best place to store potatoes for the winter?...I'll take that one...Yeah, You got it!”

     Dust rose from the spuds, tumbling from the basket to paper bag, and I propped them in my red wagon on one side of my infant daughter.  She was bundled in a plaid wool blanket and wedged between the corn and apples.  Her cheeks were pink with cold in the midst of orange, red and yellow – the colors of life exchanging itself.

I used to be long, blonde hair
And tan skin
Acrylic nails with a sharp edge
Corona in the sunset
Pretending to laugh
Just to flash my snow white teeth
But nothing was funny
Living in cocoa beach
Only so that I can say
"I live in cocoa beach"
Selfies full of *** appeal
And shorts cut like underwear
But untouchable,

Smeared eyeliner in dark corners
Lights out,
No boy between my sheets
Just me and my misery

You can make faking it a full time job
But you'll never believe your self
That's certain

My roommate and I
We played up chemistry that made
Strangers cry
But we hated each other so much
It left lumps in our throats
All the time

Yoga and Pilates
Kale smoothies and
Swimmers thighs
But I'd rather be sleeping

Screamed at my roommate
Til I coughed up blood
Caught a flight out of Orlando,
4:30 in the morning
Stumbled into Philly,
Back on my *******,
And the air tasted no different

When the act was up
Curtain closed
I washed up in Scranton,
Back where I started,
Full circle,
On the corner of cigarette ash
And Miller lite cans
I gained 20 pounds almost over night
Striped the bleach from my hair
Bit the fake nails off my real ones,
They were thin and cracking
Put on jeans and a t-shirt
Fell asleep on my parents couch
Nothing changed inside of me
From one version to the next
Same depression,
Same medicine

Nothing matters
Nothing at all
Hell follows
No escape

House feels damp
in between
seasons of life
where I try to start a fire
Sky tonight was an amethyst fan
on a ruby line
the sun an ember
rolling golden years  
down the Hills of Scranton
to the city's lights
Across the town
toward that bend in the river

a driving dusk

I used to run in Nay Aug Park
A natural spot in Scranton
On the road below my feet
Was painted two feet tall
"Free Bobby Sands"
My heart bounced off the words
To know
how he died
Didn't know I could care
that much for anything
I was to learn
Learn how to care
about despair

Siblings parrying sincerity.
Brooklyn to Scranton to Bristol and back again
couches embrace
rewind it.
Front yard fabrication of a happy family
play pretends in the paper bark tree
squeeze my arm and ask me

are you okay con?

I know I'm slightly losing it and Jill sees that now too,
So all we can but hope for is to Bluster and to Woo.
What If I sometimes falter with names or something more,
Only Fox is bent on keeping that lame and pointless score.
The rest of my fan Media provides me with great flak,
While I air my inner Irish and repeatedly attack.

As to the clueless voters I truly feel for all,
I quietly do get them, as the choices do appall.
Trump is but a cannon with a worn-out rusty bore,
Little in the barrel spraying mayhem aft and fore.
And to my friend Kamala, words truly don't suffice,
But no-one of sound mind would want to roll that dice.

So what are we now left with that possibly makes sense,
To getting people voting and off that dreaded fence.
I'm quite the only choice if truth be clearly told,
Despite the fact I'm quirky and obviously quite old.
Thank goodness for the knowledge my team will see me through,
I bless HIM every night for this weird creative crew.

They tell me what to say whenever I might need,
Have me practice all **** day to show that I can lead.
It's a challenge for them all but what about for me,
I’m sure it’ll be worth it in the end as you will see.
And while this plan unfolds I’ll keep a low profile
Speaking ever less as has become my style.

There is one thing that worries me far more than I would care,
Jon Stewart's now resurfacing with his weird confounding stare.
Throwing comments like sharp knives as a rapper from the hood,
And jabs like some street **** with a blistering left hook.
I’m asking my top people to rush him off the air,
The answer that I’m getting is pretend he isn’t there.

None of this a problem, the story of my life,
I cherish a good brawl and every dose of strife.
Abortion is my ticket with progressives by my side,
This alone will stem the frothing MAGA tide.
Just watch me now perform with my wily stash of tricks,
For if Trump is made of Teflon, I’m made from Scranton bricks.