PARKER JAMIESON

★ ★ ★ ★

POETRY

November 27th, Every Year in Which I Can Remember

The tree can only be seen sequined in my mother’s eye,
value existing when she wraps empty boxes
to make Christmas a wealthy ballroom.

She dances around the tree and tells me, like all the years before,
I cry for Christmas through the summer
I want everyday to feel like home

even when the season’s over.
I put down Shakespeare’s Tempest
to wrap the tree with lights from the patio.
Each a memorial constellation reminding of Christmas’ before.

The egg-nog candle that sleeps in a box
between each season dances with her.
I’m learning to dance with her.

I tell her Caliban moans I cried to dream again
although she replies
not all dreams are caused by sleep, and it’s Christmas
forget school for one moment
and decorate with your mother

I see the tree paste sequins
on her eye. Outside the picture window,
snow falls without shaking hands with disappointment.

The holy distance
between her and the girl she was
is a moment of awe.

The atmosphere reminds me of Charlotte Perkins Gilman
before she wrote The Yellow Wallpaper,
I wonder if that’s where my mom was right now,
in a room where she could dance and manipulate the setting

under the cozy umbrella of adoration
beside the tree in the corner of the room,
in a room without a husband

decorated by the tears of a dream she had all summer long.
Back from her postpartum island to season’s home
to make Christmas more than a novelty item

or an adaptation
of a short-story from 1892.
She still cries. She still looks at me the same this time of year
nothing fake as a sequin. She’s calm, serious as the final star.

She dances
with promised satisfaction. She tells me
to dance and stop reading The Tempest.

I laugh.
I’m under her umbrella while my father is twelve miles away
With no word, text, or sequin to be found.

At Niagara Falls in a Country That is Not My Own

It gives me reassurance
that I can look at this from two sides.
although my home is a 7-mile-walk away
the wreathes
sublimate in excelsis deo,
as wind from the Niagara River
flattered by the virginity
of each truncated edge
the circular limbs offer.
Reassurance nods, the hope
of closure. Closure,
the magic
which we cannot pretend
to exist. Magic
in the center of the wreath.
I live on the perforation
countries abide by,
inside the holes,
places we cannot rule.