“After supper,/God burps through his heartburn, eyes Gabriel/and—as expected—punishes: Two thousand years/hard labor for your antics, errand boy.”
The Orthodox Church of Ukraine Reschedules Christmas
On Christmas Eve, my nephew confesses
what he really wants are flying cars.
Not tiny spaceships, mind you, but rockets
strapped to the fenders of crossovers.
So we can shoot, he says, over the traffic.
In Kyiv, children skate the edge of a coin-
shaped lake, ice rilled by their quavering
blades, two weeks early this year.
Mothers loll along the frozen loam,
pocketing in their cheeks
stars of anise steeped in mulled wine.
Bare-gripped, they hold their foam cups,
guessing which child cut which path,
gambling on the random day the ice
will collapse. Back in Philly,
in the dead week before New Year’s,
a manager of a big box store hangs
from rafters huge banners: 50% OFF
GET WHAT YOU REALLY WANTED
My nephew breaks from my hand,
sprints across the blue and yellow carpet,
toward the aisle filled with boxes, children
sifting through shambles of warnings
that what is within may choke.
Judges 9:45
In the afterlife, I grill the ancient ghosts who first tasted
all the delicacies of the world: Describe the first truffle
ever buzzed on a human tongue. What compelled you
to lick this slime chalk shell? Are we missing something
delicious, crouching in dirt, one firmament slipped
inside another? Gazing on earth, we study a shrieking
blue jay mining leaf litter, scuttling his reward
tucked beneath some twigs. Later, in the dining room
of the primum mobile, Gabriel sneaks behind Michael’s seat,
yanks hard on his wings. Over escargot, we wonder
if the whole thing was staged. A thigh-slapper, wasn’t it?
How his feet punted up through the slop soup of his cloud?
How his eyes glassed into globes. After supper,
God burps through his heartburn, eyes Gabriel
and—as expected—punishes: Two thousand years
hard labor for your antics, errand boy. Start by delivering
this fat crate of giblets to La Tour d’Argent.
Now the ghosts press their lips flat like pasteles
without stuffing. But even as the family squabbles
through our polite silence, I still have so many questions:
Who first insisted the best way to appreciate the world
was to consume it? Why do we crave the smell of roasting flesh,
yet loathe the smell of burning hair? Don’t all conflicts eventually boil
down to preparation, size and salt?.
Dan Schall is a poet based in Pennsylvania. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Shore, The Light Ekphrastic, Arboreal Magazine, Right Hand Pointing, Cactus Heart Press, and other journals.
