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.
published in Sketchbook Journal, 2007
and The Dead Mule 2009
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
and The Dead Mule 2009
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.
published in Boxcar Poetry Review, 2006
and The Dead Mule 2010
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