We used to send cards
but now we send condolences,
prayers bound and laced with wrinkled
red ribbon. Christmas doesn’t come around
like it used to since war became a world
where we live but don’t speak, turn our cheek
as we swallow it with our juice and bacon at breakfast,
feel its hand on the small of our back guiding us
like a silent, evil angel away from our faith. Gifts
of vice wrapped tight with shiny paper surround our trees,
virtue a 24-year-old soldier who will never see
his son nor walk across a commencement stage.
Snow falls lightly, bitterness
a coat we wear to shield us from a merciless
storm, yet inside we are torn.

We play carols in the dimly lit safety
of our basements, wrap weary fingers around
the warmth of plastic mugs and sing on the inside,
old 45’s scratchy reminders of a distant past,
a returning to something familiar, yet dark
and unsacred. Repetition is the enemy of transition
and we are at war. Meeting halls, synagogues, churches
and bedside mats all lie vacant today, families finding comfort
in that which cannot be glorified. There is no satisfaction
yet we descend like wolves on a depleted supply of meat,
content with living off the scraps, honor rotting like
bones in the heat as flags are lowered and folded
with perfect symmetry, practice making an art of it.
We are the creators of our own demise, starving
masterful artists about to reap our ultimate reward,
make widows out of mothers and martyrs
out of whores until there is nothing pure
and I am afraid, put my pen down
and surrender to the blank page.

04/27/2007

Posted on 04/27/2007
Copyright © 2025 Malika Bierstein