Pris has been a Mule favorite for a long time.

Totems

The house is flooded with red,
a balloon, bursting.
Poinsettias, ribbons, balls, bells.
Red candles flaming in every window.
I breathe and my toes blush.
My mother has brought light
into this house of sickness,
offered childhood totems against
Marley’s ghost, chain clanking outside.

I lie limp and sweaty, dizzily opening
gifts tucked into red and silver.
A nightgown. Warm socks.
A thin gold chain, heart attached.
I imagine it to be my mother’s heart,
the one that has tended me since childhood,
now tending me through this dark season
of my life we call CFIDS.

We toss bows onto the floor
for the dog to play with, eat turkey.
Later, cousin at the piano, my mother
sings Silent Night in her rich alto,
and I think of other Christmases
when I was still in pigtails.
Santa and Rudolph danced through my dreams
and hope winked from every snowflake.

**

Night Divine

Santa in the seedy suit,
shakes the Salvation Army cup,
leers at me through yellow teeth.

Songbooks mold in cold cellars,
while would’ve-been carolers
hunt wide screen TVs and
Wonder bras in hopes
they’ll get lucky Christmas morn.

Come, lead me instead to graveyards
filled with poinsiettaed remembrances
to ones we have loved, who no longer
can rise to sing on this day.

**

Snow Globe

Wiry haired Nick on my left,
the one yet to die in a plane crash,
and John, once-lover,
now friend, on my right,
hold me in our giddy weave
through the snow bombed Boston Commons.

Christmas Eve…
our futures still stretched out ahead of us
on some gypsy’s palm.

We kiss where the sidewalks meet.
Nick’s mouth tastes of weed,
John’s of some sweet sticky punch.
My laugh slices the dark like a laser.
A star loosens; falls.

I wish this night
might become a snow globe
to take home and shake
on some other Christmas Eve.
I want to see us again,
we three on this holy night
high and shivering,
young and invincible,
as we dance to the last tinkling
strains of Liebestraum.

Previously published in Sketchbook Journal, 2007

**

christmas crossed

it went up yesterday
that twenty foot cross,
complete with dangling messiah,
lording it over the palmetto saws
and disco-dressed in K-mart lights.

her yearly monument to jesus.

cars troll our street from twilight to midnight,
bumper to bumper,
while her messiah watches with tired eyes.

the neighbors protest,
sign petitions,
make late night threats.

she’s ruining the neighborhood!

but the county says no law exists
to prevent an eighty year old lady
from crucifying jesus all over again
in the privacy of her own front yard.

I gather tossed beer cans at dawn.
they bring me a few bucks
for cheap muscatel.

his blood in a jug
my absolution.

Published in MiPo Weekly, 2002

**

First Night

The night after that first
hurricane we walked into
yards stacked with lost
trees, wood fences, roof
shingles and somebody’s
old lawn chair and it was
dark, so very dark, like
a plug had been pulled
on South Florida and it was
the First Night all over again
before Eve gave Adam the
apple and so black I could see
the Milky Way, the Dipper,
and the Man In the Moon’s
grin and so quiet, like Nature was
humming Hosanna in the Highest,
and I was part of the chosen choir.

Previously published in Boxcar Poetry Review, 2006

**

angels light
every star by hand tonight
holy birthday