Holly Painter is a poet, writer, and editor from southeast Michigan. Her first book of poetry, Excerpts from a Natural History, was published by Titus Books in Auckland, New Zealand in 2015. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have also been published in literary journals and anthologies in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. Holly teaches writing and literature at the University of Vermont.

 

Gather in the outcasts, all who’ve gone astray

 

In God’s preferred version

of this year’s Christmas card

I’m seven months pregnant

seven months on from our wedding

 

You’re a man now, by the way

with an untweezed moustache

and a paisley green cravat

that matches my maternity dress

 

at least in the sense that I’m red

and you’re green and God may be

color-blind as a dog but He knows

the Christmas color grayscale tones

 

from watching It’s a Wonderful Life.

We’ll watch it too this year, in God’s

preferred version of our Thanksgiving,

and not cringe at George Bailey’s

 

abusive tantrums but cheer at the final

family scene and God will smile

when we don’t pull out the tripod

for our yearly Christmas card picture

of two dykes and a dog.

~

When you tire of your homeland

 

Gather up one corner

and start walking away

 

Stroll through a neighboring autumn

Drag your native land over leaves

red and yellow like flattened peaches

 

Stretch your home spaghetti-thin

But careful! Not so fast!

 

When it becomes impractical

to tow your old life any farther

make your way to the national gallery

 

There find the painting with a thousand snaking rivers

and thread your country up to the oily horizon

~

Comfortable Grunge

 

All of us are soft and easily bruised

the flatulent boys of a kindlier youth

the sleeping patterns of fur and dripping noses

the careless rise and fall of mud-matted flanks

 

we’d bathe our lungs in comfortable grunge

wilting flower-weeds in pots that miss the sun

yellowed upholstery with its own nicotine cravings

 

on the radio, hear a recording of the tossing sea

imagine it in the stately grey of old BBC broadcasts

wonder about waves you can’t see

 

outside, the air is much too fine to breathe

donkeys chase nervous chickens through the yard

~

Defend the Holy General

His sons: the one a strapping lad,
a captain, the other his quavering ship,
whistling with wormholes.
Both throw the knuckles for something
to do but see in every comrade’s smile
only molars caked with gold

His vision: his keyring of monocles

His blood: warmer than he thinks
and harder to reach than his wife’s
her child’s bed leaking
into theirs every month
To him it only happened once

His kingdom: a ground so salty
the vegetables come up pickled
while the trees twist
gnarled like pretzels

Defend him still
the holy general
the general store
the storied past
the pastor’s wine
or swine that you are
surrender

~

Retrospective

 

Do you know the moment

when it occurs to you that

so-and-so from your childhood

 

must have been rich or ill or

pregnant or getting a divorce or

racist or not all that bright

 

and you realize that you are both

the reader and the unreliable narrator

of your own life story

 

and nothing you observe

can be trusted completely

even now when it is clear

 

that your math teacher was gay

and your pastor not aloof but shy

and your babysitter a drunk

 

and your mother always terrified

that something would happen to you,

her favorite of all her children?