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?