I had a new poem published (in four parts) at déraciné magazine.
A Christmas Poem in Four Parts
Part I
Winter holidays were
just around the corner
and five of us went
out after work
We were sitting
around the fireplace
in leather chairs
drinking wine and beer
and our conversation
splintered from the three
others and you talked about
a poem I had written
and how the vulnerability
was just too much
and how others
called it beautiful
but you just couldn’t
bring yourself to call it that
and then I told you about
how I hated the holidays
because Christmases were awful
and I rambled on about one
where we couldn’t open
presents for an hour after
we woke up because our parents
were arguing in their bedroom
and then the one where a church
bought our family presents
because we were poor
and I was like, What? We’re poor?
and the moment we got
off our bus to start Christmas break
and mom sat us down and told us
that she had packed our things
and that we were leaving dad
and we spent a month living in a motel
and the Christmas where my sister
was with me at college in Chicago
and she was suicidal
and I got her out of the hospital
and I spent evenings with her at the hotel
during her outpatient treatment
and how one evening we were watching
It’s a Wonderful Life
and I started crying at the end
and I looked over, and she was asleep
The new meds made her tired
and I felt alone
You nodded
and I stopped talking
and looked around
at the silence
and the other three
had been listening
so I stopped talking
because I tend
to share way too much
Part II
At a holiday party he told me
that he had heard or read
that people who overshare
either grew up poor
or were not very intelligent
and that thought hung on me
like the smoke from the fireplace
In the car on the way home
I was suffocated by the thought’s smell
Was I stupid?
I had to roll down the window
And absorb the cold air
Part III
I enjoy the Christmas tree
the most the week between
Christmas and New Year’s Eve
That week
it is free of
weighted
expectations
social gatherings
and anxiety
Part IV
I write about Christmas
to fill the blackhole
inside with something
other than emptiness
and replayed
worn-out
conversations
And when I’m done
for a moment
I feel relief
My sky no longer
sags and threatens
to fall like a heavy
curtain on a final act
In that moment
I see moon wisps
that smell like
cotton candy vapors
and I taste eternity
and it sooths my dry
cracked brain
When I write
my head expels
everything in it
like a shark turning
its stomach inside out
purging
what it can’t digest
And I start over
on another line
Unease wrung
from me
like water from
a sponge
