A Christmas Poem

This is a Christmas poem. It is not a Hanukkah, or, Chanukah, poem. A poem about wood or sweat or liquified wax, red. It is not a poem about palm trees, as somber and drunken as July in the forty-degree Florida winter, wrapped with multi-colored strands to celebrate light golden Mexican beer. This is not a poem about limes and other things squeezed into bottlenecks. Skin and guts contorting to spaces they were never meant for. No, this is a Christmas poem. Not a poem about Christ in thorns or about Nikolaos of Myra in Ray-Bans. Once my family gave no gifts but gave the anticipation of gift-giving to one another. Once my family gave each other lots of gifts. Always, my family sits in a circle and thinks of wrapping paper.