If a taxi is untaxied outside
the Herald Square Macy’s
on Christmas Eve like a kind of post
-modern Vitruvian centerpiece,
a kind of heavy metal suckling
pig, how much will the damage
—assuming no insurance coverage
—how much will the damage damage
the cabby’s next one hundred afternoons?
I slide myself under our tree
like a mechanic in a body shop
& look up through the lights
& ornaments
& artificial limbs
to the tin angel tied by yarn to the top
like a drunken sailor in a crow’s nest
I was on my third drink in my mother’s basement
because it was Christmas and my father is dead
and took with him the plural possessive
of the basement and the house above it.
Even when we drag the trash cans
to the curb, we look up. A nightlife
in the sky. We heard it’s al-Qaeda,
we heard it’s the government.
This naked, lonely question is still simmering in a crock pot on the counter …
The morning they saw the body in the river
on the way to school was also the day Jessica
said how she’d known all along that Seth
was gay and she was perfectly fine with it