Xmas or Bust
Xmas or Bust
by Jay Passer
landed in Sacramento
straight off Amtrak
the year Mayan
from the confines of a shoebox orbiting the moon
brain function close to nil
the New Year impractical
dwarf maple canopy performing umbrella for prone alligator
rolling back my eyes to the history of the molten origin
the sparkling reveal of the saw blade perforating
winter skies
A timely, whimsical, but also anxious confrontation with the end of the world prediction for tomorrow. I like the personal details at the poem’s beginning, as though the poet had landed as an earthly offset to an otherworldly prophet of doom, which he puts down by confining to “a shoebox orbiting the moon.” The lines “brain function close to nil/the New Year impractical” are a neat, witty means of describing the end of time. The next line may refer to something I’m not aware of, but may be a humorous shrinking of the beast of the apocalypse to our scale of creature comfort in a rain of destruction. The last three lines are pretty scary, signaling the poet’s apprehension of history swallowed up in its ouroboresic self. The word “reveal”–used as a noun, not a verb–is cutting and striking. Maybe it is time to see the “winter skies” of worldly perception open up on something “sparkling.”