Image: The Rothschild’s Surrealist Ball, 1972

My America is a Christmas Party

Welcome! I’m so happy you could it make it in this weather.
I did see the news. Yes, it’s supposed to be this cold for a week.
This dress? Oh gosh, I got this years ago in a thrift store in Santa Fe.

Come in, put your coats in this bedroom and watch the cat.
The man in that picture is my father. That’s our farm in New England.
Do you see that in the background? That’s a hay field in June.

If you follow me into the living room for some drinks?
We have beer, cider, or wine. I know nothing about wine.
This is from Walla Walla Washington and tastes like strawberries and cream.

Have you ever been to a wine tasting?
I went to a few in Idaho and Vermont.
I refuse to swish and sniff the glass.

Please, sit anywhere you like.
These are dear friends from graduate school. Poets and poets.
Writers are terrible people, did you know?

Yes, it’s true.
What keeps me floating is my mother.
She’s a kindergarten teacher.

Nope, no children for us. Maybe ever.
Are you kidding. It took me forty-five years to find him.
I wasn’t getting married.

We must keep moving forward though, don’t we?
There are so many different ways to mother.
What times!

The reason? I chose school.
School again, and again, and again.
It gave me something to do in Asheville, Burlington, and Middlebury.

Are the decorations too much?
Good, I’m glad they comfort you.
Before you know it this anthropocene will drown us all.

Well, a toast.

To the life we never know.
To the future walks down waking roads.
To you, and to you, and to you.
To these racing years and books we’ll read quickly.
To our mums and dads for bearing us and sharing us.

This is the eternal problem, isn’t it?
Yes, I agree with you.
We’ll just sit by the twinkly tree tonight.

No sense in the evening taking a turn.
Please, help yourself to this kielbasa.
My father shipped it from Deerfield Massachusetts.