Tag Archives: Christmas Poem

Things to Be Grateful for During the American Winter by Michael Brockley

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~For K.D.

The portrait of Harriet Tubman burbling in the ink of a twenty-dollar bill. The way hands can be cupped to form eagles and bison when the shadows on bedroom walls slip through the jet stream of your imagination. The way women’s boots never go out of style. The way wallets are cluttered with unclaimed lottery tickets and Chinese fortune scripts. Take pleasure knowing chaos theory honors the wisdom of Japanese butterflies. Cherish this year of lunar wonders. October’s Hunter’s Moon. The November moon so close a heroine could step off of her hometown street into zero gravity. Hold your memory of a president racing his puppy through the White House halls at Christmas. Celebrate the happy accident of the newest blue and the oldest cherished songs. Sing Hallelujah! Thank the fog. Thank the way persimmons ripen during hard frosts. The taste of haiku lingering on your tongue. Take comfort in the assurance that scarves will always fit. Be grateful for the circle of light dancing above your head. It guardians the secrets in your eyes. Be grateful for the photographs of your most embarrassing moments. Be grateful for the impossible challenges before you. Be grateful knowing that, for this hour, gratitude is enough.

—

Michael Brockley is a 68-year old semi-retired school psychologist who still works in rural northeast Indiana. His poems have appeared in Atticus Review, Gargoyle, Tattoo Highway and Tipton Poetry Journal. Poems are forthcoming in 3Elements Review, Clementine Unbound, Riddled with Arrows and Flying Island. 

 

‘Tis the Season by Karen Wolf

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Blue eyes dripping sadness stare through dark
rimmed glasses and Daddy’s Mopar
truck windshield. My
running pace allowing glimpses of his
disproportionate pear-shaped scowl. Flashes
of his life imagined
schoolmate cruelties leveled for his
countenance, name calling,
social shunning, tripping, punches. A passing freight
train halts my progress enabling a hello
with Dad as he emerges from the post office, Christmas
cookie in hand. His boyhood
sadness crumbles away.
—

Karen Wolf has been published in Smokey Blue Literary and Art Magazine, The Wagon Magazine, Oasis Journal, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, The Bookends Review, The Drunken Llama, Blynkt, Raw Dog Press, Street Light Press, Lady Blue Literary Arts Journal, Ripcord Magazine and many others. Her chapbook, “That’s Just the Way it Is”, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2018.

She says that poetry soothes the savage beast and opens her eyes to the beauty that abounds within the world.

Northwoods Christmas Orphans by Nancy Austin

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We caved to the kids visiting in-laws on the real holiday.
No, not chopped liver, I reassure my husband, coax a scarf
into his ungloved hands, point to crystalline aspen and hoar-frosted
huckleberry under the just-shaken snow globe sky.

Tires crunch a path around the lake, a doe darts across the wooded drive.
We kick off boots in a knotty-pine kitchen fragrant with cardamom, bacon, vanilla.
Winnie whips up her cream cheese frosting, mammoth cinnamon swirls yield
to our knives thick with sweet butter cream.
Emily, energizer bunny of this geriatric cohort, converses too quickly to think
between gasps of air, My friend can’t see with her immaculate generation.

We gather around their woodstove after breakfast.
Emily’s husband Ray recalls the year their Ford Fairlane
broke down near a rural tavern/general store,
Emily fills in every other phrase before he can finish.
Bologna at the bar. Crackers that Christmas.
Winnie and Ron remember a holiday alone,
Rotisserie chicken with our fingers in the parking lot.
They held one another’s gaze like a warm hand,
as if to reaffirm life’s slights and disappointments
form the glue that bonds, that comforts.
I nodded to my husband with that same knowing glance.
He narrowed his eyes, muttered chopped liver.

—

Nancy Austin has lived on both coasts, but prefers the land between. She relishes time to write in the Northwoods. Austin’s work has appeared in Adanna, Ariel, Gyroscope Review, Midwestern Gothic, Portage Magazine, Verse Wisconsin, and the Wisconsin Poets Calendars. Her poetry collection is titled Remnants of Warmth (Aldrich Press/Kelsay Books, 2016).

Predictable Patterns by Laurinda Lind

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I can’t stay centered on the winter solstice
even in its most ancient aspect and certainly
not its spendthrift one but when I was young,
boxes of attic bulbs determined December

along with trees that don’t belong inside
and won’t stay up, but mean it isn’t always
going to be this dark and cold, we’ll see
ground again without snow. After years

of take-apart trees and malevolent demented
light strings I have failed in the Christmas
category, either neglecting the tree till
it shredded to the touch in April and could

be scattered in the yard over leaves I never
raked in the fall, or not putting one up at all
so my daughter would come home from
college and sigh and put it up herself, and

once opened all my CDs. Stuck them on
the branches where they shone silver like
a Jetsons tree, assuming they would still
have trees in that century, that the seasons

will mean something after this terrible time
where we are now, this dark we are not
sure will take us through to spring, no
matter how much tinsel we throw to it.
—

Laurinda Lind’s poems are in Another Chicago Magazine, Blue Earth Review, Blueline, Comstock Review, Constellations, Main Street Rag, and Paterson Literary Review; also anthologies Visiting Bob [Dylan] (New Rivers) and AFTERMATH (Radix). In 2018, she won the Keats-Shelley Prize for adult poetry and the New York State Fair poetry competition.

The Gift by Mary C. Rowin

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A dream that among things
on offer I select a pair
of light green baby socks.

They are cotton, folded flat
with some eyelet stitching
around the edge of the cuff

and like the Christmas cookie
you bring home from the bank
for me, wrapped in a paper napkin,

I fold the socks and push them
into my jacket pocket. Protective.
To save for later.  Or to share.

As if I could hold you in my palm
like a small gift I chose for myself.

—

Mary C. Rowin’s poetry has appeared in various publications such as Hummingbird, Panopoly, Solitary Plover, Stoneboat and Oakwood Literary Magazine.  Mary’s poem “Centering,” published in the Winter 2018 issue of Blue Heron Review, has been nominated for the Push Cart Anthology.  Recent awards include poetry prizes from The Nebraska Writers Guild and from Journal from the Heartland, plus Honorable Mentions from the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and Wisconsin People and Ideas.  Mary lives with her husband in Middleton, Wisconsin.

“Winter Decoration” by Frances Rove

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At the juncture of two branches,
Blown by the wind and bounced about,
Sits a small nest to take its chances
And try to ride the winter out.

Simple and barren, mud and leaves,
Twigs and yet something else besides.
Jostled by the stiff Northern breeze.
Who can spy what soul in their hides?

Is that tinsel waving madly
On the too early budding tree?
Frost will surely nip it badly.
Far too optimistic are thee.

But did the cold bird decorate,
Choosing tinsel from other trash,
To please his tiny, feathered mate
With silver woven in their stash?

I venture closer, I must know.
Is it a trick of light or true?
Is tinsel woven in or no?
Surely, such a wise bird could do.

YES, tinsel from our Christmas time,
Chosen by some light-hearted bird.
Woven in the sweet nest sublime
And then undone without a word.

Unraveled by the frigid winds
Of the long, lonely winter nights.
Is it like mere string, as it bends,
Or is tinsel bird’s soul delight?

Silver sparkles under the Moon,
Chosen with purpose by the bird?
Decoration fades all too soon.
Wind whips, tinsel flies, all unheard.

—

Frances Rove is fifty-eight-year-old attorney on disability due to bipolar disorder who is writing a memoir and haas written poetry and short stories since grade school. She belongs to the National Association of Memoir Writers and Mensa and enjoys advocacy for mental health and adoption issues and for animals.

“Christmas 2015” by Ujjvala Bagal Rahn

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~(Tybee Beach)

Under winter’s diamond night
cross the shore of sunburnt youth.
Underneath the ocean’s roar
sighs our baby’s scattered dust.
Denting gentle sands, our girl’s
toddler feet made turtle trails
lead you through the windy chill.
Soon you’ll see us, far away
underneath the shivering moon.
Cradled in my hands, your gift
wrapped in time’s dichroic foil.

—

Ujjvala Bagal Rahn’s poems have appeared most recently in Möbius: The Journal of Social Change, Frogpond, and Poetry in the Air (Jan. 21, 2015, WHCJ, Savannah State University). Her micropress, Red Silk Press (poetry, science, science fiction and memoir), has supported the Savannah Spoken Word Festival, Asian Festival, and Local Author Day.

Legacy by Terry Severhill

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We accumulate our past as though it were a treasure horde and we forget in the moments of passing down the family history to dust off the layers and the contributions of generations of liars and lawyers. We can’t seem to shake loose that thought that everything is important . . . to someone, so great-great Aunt Maggie’s recipes for stewed Uncle Franks hangover remedy is still passed around at Christmas gatherings . . . 1] Yell shrilly into either ear. . .  2] Bang pots and pans with a Metal spoon. . .  3] Serve two day old, ice cold bitter coffee . . .  4] Repeat until he gets his lazy ass up and working or until the sheriff stops by. The remnants of wedding dresses and military medals are enshrined in the collective attic of our family tree which no longer has leaves, although some think that the bats in the belfry are there to remind us to eat lots of garlic, some of us have a rational fear of vampires. We don’t have any generals in our family line. . . . none that we are allowed to speak of. . . . something about being on the wrong side of history. . . which may be akin to being on the wrong side of gravity. The best thing about having a family history is family . . . . if only we didn’t have to try and explain.

—

Terry’s work have been published in a variety of venues, awarded “Art Young’s Poetry Prize 2016.” He is pending publication in several journals and anthologies. His first collection, from West Vine Press, Beneath the Shadow of the Sun is due out late 2017. Terry is a member of the Veterans Writing Group of San Diego. He lives and writes in Vista, California, reads at several open mic events in San Diego County monthly.

 

Of Things Past by Lenny Lianne

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A long time, too long, since we have done — this,
he said and plopped a fat bottle of Mateus
and two small paper cups from the bathroom
onto the table. He took out a maimed box
of Jolly Time Blast O Butter popcorn
from a grocery bag, and grinned at her.

She could tell that this was a campaign
to coax her to laugh, to forget
about the future. The distant past
would be the tactic tonight, the way
they used to take turns telling
each other about what had come before

— about those freakish Christmas gifts
from screwball aunts, sibling pranks,
his teen summer by a cirque-cupped pond.
And after a third refill of new wine,
they spilled out stories of lapsed romances
as though, by sharing their own secrets,

they’d earned whatever alighted afterwards.
Shag carpets, concrete block with wood
plank bookcases and black beanbag
chairs, each had departed by now,
passing away for better or worse,
like something familiar that’s lost its way.

     after a line by Lucia Perillo
—
Lenny Lianne is the author of four full-length books of poetry. She holds a MFA from George Mason University. Her poems have appeared in Rattle, California Quarterly, Third Wednesday, The Dead Mule of Southern Literature, and others.

Barnwork We Didn’t Talk Much About by Charles A. Swanson

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Manure was the word we used, or barnyard
muck. Not that manure was elegant,
but more so in the cattle stalls.

I still remember Christmas holidays,
the manure spreader parked,
ready, between two open doors,

and long-shafted pitch forks,
one with four tines, one with five,
the wood worn smooth in the handles,

the metal burnished and gleaming,
and the litter (isn’t that a nice word)
mixed with hay coming up in layers,

almost like thin-rolled well-baked pastry.
Cow manure smells sunny
compared to pig. Cows eat grass,

breathe grass, pass grass,
and something, though faint, lingers
of clover and sun and vegetable life.

Outside, around the doors, where sweet rain
fouled manure—imagine such a thing!—
the cows’ stomping and milling

made a black mess, a true muck—
this is what shit looks like, I always
think, even now, something fetid,

fecal, foul, black as tar, suck-
deep and miry. I walked through that,
too, as barefoot country boys do,

in summertime. But in winter,
straining to pry and peel up
a thin layer, a towel-length sheet

of cow manure, I sang (whenever,
I could find, a breath, between forking,
and tossing) every Christmas carol I knew.

—

Charles A. Swanson teaches English in an Academy for Engineering and Technology.  Frequently published in Appalachian magazines, he also pastors a small church, Melville Avenue Baptist in Danville.  He has two books of poems:  After the Garden, published by MotesBooks, and Farm Life and Legend, from Finishing Line Press. 

 

 

Rest Stop by Allyson Whipple

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~For Harrison Porobil

You’ve survived worse odds
than this: childhood,
hurricanes, homelessness.
This time it’s just a broken
lock that has you stuck
here, taking stock
of misfortune. What a way
to spend Christmas
morning, trapped on I-10.
Gas station toilet a stinking
pen. But no matter
how you turn and pull
and push until your muscles
burn you’re stuck with stale
air and stink and more time
than you’d like to think
about the turning of the year.

There’s sweat upon your brow
from fighting with the force
that holds you in. As it’s always been:
you’re a man of motion. Kick
the door open, get in the car.

—

Allyson Whipple has an M.A. in English and a black belt in Kung Fu. She is currently studying poetry through the UT-El Paso Online MFA Program. Allyson serves as co-editor of the Texas Poetry Calendar, and is the author of the chapbook We’re Smaller Than We Think We Are. She teaches at Austin Community College.

Texas Poetry Calendar 2016

Like Her by by J.D. Isip

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Thirty-eight, maybe forty boxes—
how does that divide by nine marriages?
Old photo albums we don’t look through
stacked sideways, shut for years—
A hat box her third husband gave her
from Italy—where she said he died
At least to her—stuffed with Christmas cards
the old 70’s, foil kind—flimsy
And showy, now frail, like her

I’ve begged her to dump them, dump them all
but she protests, she pulls some trick—
A yellowed picture of my dad in a fading, brown suit
or my brother’s first card from his father (not mine)—
I digress. To me, it’s a waste
like being married nine times

To hold onto the crumbling pieces of a past
that rots away in a rented storage space
Each box as empty as they are full

Married nine times—unfathomable
as these old boxes, stuffed, overflowing
Contents far too daunting, too consuming to explore—
probably not enough to learn from, or care for
To me, it’s a waste—I’m not like her—
I’d throw them away
Clean up and move on.
—

J.D. Isip’s academic writings, poetry, plays, and short stories have appeared (or will appear) in a number of publications including The Louisville Review, Changing English, Revista Aetenea, St. John’s Humanities Review, Teaching American Literature, The Citron Review, Poetry Quarterly, Scholars & Rogues, Mused, and The Copperfield Review. He is a doctoral student in English at Texas A&M University-Commerce.