Happy New Year

It is that dark night,

when we must say goodbye

to all that has been

and hope for what will come,

tomorrow.

At midnight,

we will begin again.

Baptized like a newborn baby,

the wine dripped upon our heads,

redeeming us

as the sky fills up with confetti.

Our weary eyes

searching back through the year

hoping

hoping,

we will find something we can point to

where we can say,

“See, I did this. I existed. I mattered.”

The sound of steel being hammered into submission.

The blade of grass cut and left to die.

Our endless stupidity,
like those who have come before us

kneeling at the altar and crying.

Our bottles and tables perfectly arranged,

candles lit,

appetites filled.

Glasses held high toasting the

unforeseen.

Our prayer.

To be different. 

Waiting For The Mail

All morning I waited for the mail.

It usually comes by 10:00 a.m.

So around 10:30, I started checking the mailbox.

Nothing.

Fifteen minutes later, I checked again,

positive, that somehow, I missed hearing the mailman.

Still nothing.

I went in to the kitchen and started cooking and thought,

“O.k. it’s 11o’clock, it’s got to be there by now.”

So, I opened the door, lifted the black metal lid, and still,

nothing.

I shut the door, 

embarrassed that the neighbors had seen me look for the mail three times now, 

like some OCD lunatic.

The weird part was,

I don’t even know what I was checking for.

I just wanted the mail.

(And some part of me was sure there was going to be something really fantastic in it.)

After all, Christmas was only three days ago.

What if there were some late Christmas card 

from someone who couldn’t get it together,

or even a present?

I felt like Charlie Brown.

It was possible.

Wasn’t it?

Around 12:30, after making lunch and eating it

in about four minutes,

I opened the door once more and saw the black metal lid half-open.

The mail had arrived!

I pulled it out and began rifling through it.

Three donation envelopes, two cheesy catalogues, and one redplum.com reader later,

I had gone through the mail.

All of it.

No presents.

No cards.

No green envelopes from the WGA.

It all went straight into the trash.

“All that anticipation for nothing”, I thought.

I do that a lot – think that what’s coming is going to be fantastic, 

only to find out that it really isn’t.

Like that new pair of slippers that I think I must have

will probably end up hurting my feet.

And that new set of sheets that I saw in the magazine

will probably be returned because they’ll itch my skin.

And that shirt I got for Christmas, the clingy one that reveals everything, 

will probably end up stuffed in a drawer never to be worn.

For me, it’s always the things that I never see coming that end up being the best –

The stranger who stops and hands me the glove that I dropped.

Or the tangerine I peeled that’s sweeter than any I’ve ever had, 

even though the previous two sucked.

Or the substitute ballet teacher who compliments 

my turnout even when my regular ballet teacher never has.

And even though I know all of this,

or say I know all of this,

the truth is,

every morning,

I’ll still be

waiting 

for the mail. 

Christmas on 4th

I am sitting in the black cashmere cape.

The one your aunt left behind when she died.

The one I never would have purchased on my own,

but now find myself wearing all the time,

like some dark poetess.

I am swollen,

a stuffed turkey

on Christmas morning.

The gifts I wanted to put under the tree

never materialized,

we were too sick to go out and buy them.

Instead, we stayed home 

and made kale and white bean soup,

and red cabbage with apples and beer,

and cranberry with pear,

and we ate and we ate,

and we marveled at how much we have 

without a single present to unwrap. 

Rum Punch

It isn’t the severed head on the block

that frightens me,

or the way corn is two for a dollar

in December,

or how faces smile without meaning

as they pass in red Fords.

Yes,

my stockings are hung.

Red and green with moose heads and bear.

Labels still attached for a return I’ll never make.

And what of it?

It’s nothing,

I promise.

It’s just,

sometimes a girl

wants to be a girl,

and wear short skirts and heels

and dance to the Talking Heads

while nobody is watching.

Boots clicking on wooden floors,

hips swaying in search of rum punch

and love.

Look,

over in the corner,

the mistletoe is hung.

Christmas is coming.
See.

There’s no way of stopping it.

It will be here in a week

with ribbons and bows

and packages some will never unwrap.

And I will return to my tree,

the tabletop one with the needles dropping,

and I will kiss the ornaments,

each and everyone,

and pray they survive

another year. 

Lunacy

There must be some way

to drink down

lunacy.

To enjoy it in long sips

like a fine black tea

or a glass of wine.

Most of my life,

I have tried to hide from it,

keeping my head down,

scared turtle-like

hoping it would pass over me,

like some weird cumulus cloud

on its way to somewhere else.

But that has never worked.

When I feel lunacy coming near me

my body stiffens,

as if someone had poured green slime

down my back.

I feel the cold on my neck and the sick feeling

settling into my stomach.

I walk around the house unable to turn my head,

unable to get out of the way of future assaults. 

When someone asks me about it,

I want to say, “It isn’t me.   I’m not the one.

These aren’t my people.”

But that’s a lie.

I come from lunacy.

It is as much a part of me

as the mole on my right hand,

or my jagged fingernails,

the ones I have bitten down to the quick,
just like my mother.