December - Poem 8
How Much Breakfast Can Santa Realistically Eat? / Kate Bowers
Artist: Laura Jean McLaughlin, Pittsburgh, PA, 2025, Private Collection
For Tom
There were several Breakfasts With Santa scheduled around town that Saint Nicholas Day back in the aughts. Father arranged for us to be at them all, studying the paper with Mother those final November evenings to pinpoint the schedules then buying blocks of tickets for each event.
We were so young at the time occupied with puzzles and dolls, Tonka Trucks and Legos scattered there on the braided rug under his feet, television cartoons filling our eyes.
What did we know of love?
We quieted, listening closely without looking their way as they murmured, possums we knew how to play while struggling fiercely to decode a hint, a glimmer of what it all meant, how they pointed at the page, mentioning money and times specifically before going back to their spelling game, letters instead of words they didn’t want us to hear just yet.
DECEMBER 6. THE DAY OF DAYS ARRIVED
That morning Father surprised us with the news, and after we had finished tumbling, Mother pressed us into dresses and miniature suits then sent the five of us off walking down to Main Street with Father, who had taken the precaution to staple an itinerary inside each of our coats just in case we happened to stray. He had a lot of faith in the under age 8 crowd to figure it all out.
· Saint Kilian’s 9 to 11a.m.
· Highlands Golf Course 8 to 10 a.m.
· Rotary 7 to 9 a.m
· Kiwanis 7:30 to 9 a.m.
· Cummings Candy Shoppe 8:30 to 10:00 a.m.
That morning, we ate it all while Santa grew plumper and plumper at the head tables with every swallow, never questioning how he somehow managed to stay where we had been as we were leaving and still arrive at the next stop before we walked through the door.
Our Father shepherded us along, hailing other parents in the background of all the clatter wherever we went, many of them yet unaware how their own children had come to be invited for free that year. All of them bursting with delight.
“You can never have too much Santa,” our father told us years later when asked about that day. “And certainly never enough bacon or pancakes for that matter.”
That same afternoon, my 6-year-old Lisa was found holding her 8-year-old brother Jeff in a headlock and shouting “He’s a Christmas spirit!” again and again over her brother’s “No he’s not!” We broke it up, but later I caught my father giving Lisa an extra sweet and a nod.
Santa, she had learned from her Pap, was the most important meal of the day, every day, a long and open invitation to which she heartily subscribed.
I can’t say that I blame her. Though she is little, she is fierce.
And really they’re both absolutely correct. Breakfast With Santa is happening all the time. The world is full of his breakfast, a menu large and inclusive, pancakes everywhere
bubbling up into the mouth from the griddle
warmed purely from the joy of these tendernesses,
these touch points,
the father there, the child, the mother all in three, sealed in magic, a way of being.
All this joy edged in sugared flour and eggs. Who would have thunk it really?
Well, I mean, other than the obvious one of course.
The moon, the tides, and trash tv / Katie Collins
The stars I claim are misaligned.
I know no constellations.
Mercury’s in retrograde
And my first period lasted two weeks straight.
I don’t leave my bed.
In my head, I have 51Minds
All focused on my hairy legs
And ever rising dress size.
The television feeds me well
A diet of distraction.
I’ve outgrown my first real bra
The wires stab my chest
Will Kirby rode in on a meteorite
Free Alba Self Tanner/Easy Pickup in the Infirmary / Ellen Ferguson
You tell students Romanticism responds to Neoclassical/
Realism romping past Romance, yet
You blink false as your lashes, lashing out
Against Swift’s beautiful young nymph, who also came assembly required
Slathering me mind over limbs --
My name, self-tanner, implies you built this house.
You land in the infirmary,
No surprises there.
Like Sir Walter Scott’s wretch, “unwept, unhonored, and unsung,”
I join Hall’s lemon menthols down the hall.
Your tan, fake; your fragrance, last week’s coconut oil:
Rancid, removable, unsunned.
Under the New Moon / Chris Fong Chew
I sat in the stillness pondering
as cars drove by, rattling the blinds
like bells and people laughed
and shouted and stomped in the street.
What remains when the voices disappear?
When the street has turned silent
night, when people no longer walk
the dogs stop their bark
and the moon has risen to its full.
What remains when light has disappeared?
The eve of a new moon, the sky
dimly lit, like a fading bulb
darkening the streets as the lamps
shine so much more against the
black canvas sky.
What happens when a star goes out?
Does anyone notice, the slightly bigger
hole in the sky, where a small glimmer
once existed, now millions of light years
away, a catastrophic event is seen as a small
flash and then a flicker of a bulb burning out.
When all there is left is you, who are you?
When the voices disappear into the dark
night and light no longer illuminates
the street from the sky, when stars
burn out and we are plunged
into our own darkness.
Do you finally see the light?
The Reason for the Season / Davis Hicks
The day after long-cooked meal
the sirens came.
Their shifting silhouettes willing to shapeshift
copy-cat calls of hunger,
growled or whispered, sultry or raged or clever,
whatever would call us to move our eyebrows,
move all of our bodies and all of our not-bodies.
It’s towards the travel-time, twisting out
after digesting the slow-cooked and the well-meant.
Always anticipation,
after hands have held and thanks have been said
I witness their bombardment.
It’d been warned about for days, perhaps weeks,
that annual reminder of the gluttonous
call of so many shock-scalding scally snakes,
who only consume the self,
who only produce waste.
The binge-purge,
what an advent.
It’s on sale, as if cheapness promotes quality,
as if more is ever enough.
Deals, I fear, are always with the devil.
Burnt Rice Tea / Victor Barnuevo Velasco
In Grandmother’s house, every accident is a gift. Another child is another unprayed-for answer. They fill up rooms. They raise their palms to heaven. They leave behind rolled mats and crumpled pillows in corners.
Grandmother counts the children around the table. No one starts their meal when one is missing. When a child burps at the end of dinner she says, Thank you God. Thank you, God, we answer. A skinned knee and a stubbed toe are a break for benediction. Bless the Lord, she says. Bless the Lord, we bow in recognition.
In Grandmother’s house, every mishap is a fortune. A pot left too long on fire scorches the bottom of rice and becomes a present. She scoops out the steaming pearly grains. She keeps the burnt part longer until it is charcoal black. She scrapes and crushes the crust, mashes brown sugar, pours water, and watches it boil in silence. She pours the syrupy liquid in our cups, empty as our stomachs. She tells each child, drink up, you need to walk faster; when you leave, you need to outrun the monsters.
A grain of rice makes its way down my throat. I choke. She slaps my back. I fall forward. She picks me up; the pain of her palm is absent from her eyes. Bless the Lord, she says. My mouth opens but I choke before I can reprise her blessing.
tell me you love me / Jen Wagner
Just tell me you love me already.
I can feel the words on the tip of your tongue.
Every time I kiss you.
They sit on the edge,
Waiting.
Patiently.
To jump.
Let them slide down my throat.
Slow and lovely.
Like warm honey.
Let them nest in my heart.
Burrow in belly.
And make their home in my skin.
Just tell me you love me already.
so I can tell you too.
So we say
Every time we part ways…
“I love you.”
And…
“I love you too.”
What I hope to learn from my eight-year-old / Stacy Walker
A clear no,
A full-body yes,
The inability to fake it,
Absolute adoration
For friends,
Unbridled excitement
At every reunion,
Pure awe at the moon,
The stars,
The ocean,
A roly-poly,
Unfiltered feelings,
Insistence upon comfort,
How to let curiosity free,
Regularly asking,
“Wanna see something cool?”
Long hugs,
Believing it will all work out,
A willingness to ask someone
To be my friend,
The bravery to tell someone
They’ve hurt my feelings,
The ability to take my time,
To take what’s mine.
