Short Stories, Long Odds

I.
In Grapevine at a big resort
they had Christmas lights
on public display,

and a show about Ice
you could pay
$30 to see.

We took pictures and saw
the lights and then
we drove home.

Then I stood in the kitchen
and I looked in my freezer
all for free.

(USA! USA! USA!)

II.
Welcome to 2009!
Like you, I spent
New Year’s Eve

with friends, telling
stories and drinking champagne
and kissing a pretty
girl at midnight,

and

watching a very popular web cartoonist
do an impersonation of
a tyrannosaur

a tyrannosaur that smokes Camels and screams,
DRAW A VAGINA

III.
In the glut of new commercials
for the holiday advertising season,
Diana unearths a gem:

a man in a Clorox van
pulls up to a youth soccer game

and yells at
the boys with a bullhorn
to take off their jerseys.

Color safe, yes
But safe?

IV.
My mother
lost her father and
lost her sister
last year at the holidays.

This year, no one died.
We made cookies and
had Christmas and
carried on,

and my mother
who, during
this season long ago
lost her mother,

on Christmas Day
in her house
found us.

V.
My age

and the amount of
pleasure I derive

from receiving underwear
as a gift

are directly correlated.

VI.
At a party
in line for the john

young gay men discuss
coming out to their parents
or failing to do so

I mention my old
college roommate Danny
who had been petrified to tell
his Mormon Army family who he was.

So I took him to Allston, I say,
and bought him a poster
of Leonardo DiCaprio.

Hoop Dreams Leo,
one guy asks, or
Titanic Leo

I wink and say
Romeo + Juliette Leo.

Approving nods follow
and a bonus high five.

VII.
Dana Lane is where we live
and it is a street strung
with joyless bastards.

No lights, no
inflatable giant snowmen,

no penguins on
an eastbound train
to Toyburg.

After Thanksgiving I climb the roof
wore my hands raw on shingles
while putting up lights

As I try not to fall and
ruin Christmas on an epic scale
a neighbor approaches.

Two Pug Young Mom yells
OH HEY
and waves.

I say hello but
keep my hands at work.

OH ARE YOU PUTTING UP CHRISTMAS LIGHTS
she ask/yells, working feigned surprise into amplified inflection.

I look at the peak
and eaves half-lined
and the piles of knotted
lights at her feet.

Am I, I ask.

VIII.
Best literary development -
A New Year’s Resolution to
publish a poetry collection

about life
as a man
in Generation What.

Title: Bros Before Prose