33 - This Is What You're Supposed To Do

There are still half-feral cats

in the back gnawing dog food

poured into dented tin trays,

still the pool table, drab felt

chalky, ripped and piled with

flashlights, shoeboxes of papers

bolts in zipper bags, nickels.

There is still wood stove heat

slow-burning the empty

kettle’s thin copper base on top,

front door propped a crack

and drying enormous wool socks.

There are still endtables piled

high with library paperback

mysteries, lent VHS tapes in crates,

baskets of junk mail, all

addressed to “Loser.” There

are still two separate beds

in two separate rooms, still

that proud solid pine carved

stopped clock and fine

undisturbed fur coats on the rack.

I am still seated at the kids’ table,

twenty-three years running,

and I find a turkey bone

in the stuffing you assured me

would be vegetarian this year,

so I could still eat something.

I’ve never yet heard you

tell my father you love him,

but everyone, even

my aunt’s butch girlfriend

and those damned cats

get fed when they come.

31 - So Insulting, So Enlightened

One year, my sister and I

subjected Christmas mythology

to empirical testing.

“Sign here,” scrawled on

cardstock, “if you, Greenie

the Wonder Dog, who we love

so so much, are truly real.”

Then a hand-dotted line,

the length of a linchpin.

Folded over, addressed,

blessed with a gold star sticker,

scotch-taped to the pebbly wall

above the obligatory cookies.

We’d play the powers that be like

cheap psychics fed false

leads on how to flatter us best.

Come morning, bypassing presents

we opened the card to find

our stepfather’s scrawl

dyslexically confirming

the existence of a recently

invented flying dog.

We frowned a little at the gifts,

realizing they had been sacrificed

to the idols of magical thinking.

We both got just what we wanted.

9 - Christmas Casket

You built a box for the birth of salvation.

It was cedarwood, stained.

Nestled underneath a Yuletide spruce, the hope

chest crouched like some anthropic bud

off the conifer’s dying body,

trampling its skirt with

blockish feet.

It was ugly, misaligned, and guilting:

The lid was crowned in twisted,

viney wire, applied with spikes

driven down in woodflesh,

and opened, you could see

the tips protrude inside,

reminders, maybe, of your

hard toil.

You would always remind

us of your

hard toil.

Resin-scent would henceforth be

everpresent at my bedfoot,

cloaking me in the aromatic

afterlife of trees

and filling my throat

with presence,

an admonition that my future

was your gift.

I was meant to make my dowry in it,

Assembling the sundry lot of

coupled life:

towels, cookery, bedthings.

But I filled it with

cheap, broken junk.