Not Another Holiday Poem

grandmother’s 
annual holiday poem
was nothing like The New Yorker’s 
annual holiday poem

the top bard of Walton, NY
poet laureate of St. John Street
wouldn’t think of starting a poem
with “Greetings, Friends!”

she was more 
Miss Havisham 
than Grandma Moses 
in those later years 

when the wraparound porch 
on her black & white Victorian 
collapsed like a poorly measured 
fruit cake 

and the delivery man 
who dropped off groceries 
& cases of Genny every Friday 
would find her 

on the old wooden swing 
kicking out 
over 
the abyss

noting the times & the season
hark, with each pump 
of her schoolyard legs. 


 
Suburb

such a fuss 
was raised last night 
by the chickens 
in the neighbor’s coop 

you would have thought 
kids were staging boxing matches 
in the foreclosure
on the corner 

or Mr. Connolly was finally 
putting the misery 
out of his sour puss 
wife

or a delivery man 
who knows that evil 
works against us
on a daily basis 

was fighting 
the high-casualty event 
of middle class 
life

by arranging 
a tufted boudoir chaise 
in a perfect pelt 
of moonlight. 

 
Mount Vision

it’s a small town
nothing to do
but fantasize
so when news 
cropped that the radio tower
on Mount Vision
had picked spectral music
out of the sky

the disappointment
was as sharp
as finding
a plastic toy saucer
at the bottom 
of a technicolor
cereal 
box
 
the rise and fall of the west

‘You’ve gotta’ be fucking kidding me,’ 
I say, half under my breath ‘are you 
sure that’s right?’ 
The woman 
behind the cash register 
is wearing pink earmuffs. It’s December 
but there isn’t a bite to the air 
or as much as a flake on the ground. 
The pink earmuffs are her way 
of saying ‘sorry, fucker 
I can’t hear you bitch 
about the cost of potatoes
because my ears are huddled 
in pink earmuffs.’ 
I’m so pissed
about the cost of potatoes
I wanna’ tell the woman 
that her pink earmuffs 
make her look like she feeds 
on the homeless.
But she won’t hear me anyway,
so what’s the point. 
Then, in a mock hospitable voice
she adds, ‘sir, potatoes fueled 
the rise of the West.’  
The last item scans, chirps. 
‘Paper or plastic?’ 
‘Plastic,’ I say 
doing my part to hasten the fall. 

 
the last roundhouse on dead end street

south 
of the rib, in the flatlands
dram shops & the 
roundhouse, upstate’s 
industrial colosseum 

the Canadian Pacific 
razed it in 93’ but demolition began earlier 
36 of 52 brick stalls 
scattered like a game 
of pick-up 

amongst the ruins 
& rotting Pullman mail cars 

a woman 
with a dismembered 
goat hoof between her legs 
says to an ex-con: 
tastes are becoming hard to satisfy.