An Early Christmas Poem

Craig Crashes the Party

He’s come here,
past the swing and unsteady of that gate
past a yard mowed like an afterthought,
beer cans kicked beneath spruce skirts,
leaves melting into mush and snow rimed in street soot,
the sprinkler, out-of-box sheen and upside down
glazed in its frozen spittle.
Over the uneven heave of the walkway,
to this door he can’t recall.
This door too wrong for this slump,
mahogany molds dripping into shapes
as soft as sex, as duck down,
and glass frosted like the film of dreams.
Too real for this haunt, too much a patch
on his memories.
This door like a scepter holding up a tent.

He knows the inside
will be the same party that has played for 28 years.
Some gas station mix spins brass enough
to rattle the half hung Christmas glitters,
the lights no one removed last year or any year.
The aging defiants will guzzle and chug, cuss and smoke
in the seventies colored kitchen,
around the dartboard, the hallways,
on the couch slowly blackholing the sitters.
The same discussion, the same stats and half-knowledge
will erupt sometime in front of the game
discolored by the swelling sunspot on the TV screen.
And they will all egg each other on from drink to drink,
saying things about “Tonight!’ and “Could be our last!”
The night will wind into snores, into lawn pissing,
and some slipslur apology about a secret shared
they all knew and gossiped the year about already.

This is family, he knows.
A blood pull that’s probably imagined.
It’s been 12 years and he’s a man now.
He should go inside, find a place.
His truck’s roar stirs the unconscious not a little.