Ugly Sweater Story
it came in the mail a gift from the wife striped like sick zebras
sheep gone ill and florid woolen and hot but not quite the right size, she
begs me to wear it to work, to outings, for walks in the street, but I
want to vomit Christmas
under no obligation should I wear this abortive painting across
my tentative breast. fast forward a year I wore it once and
scared shitless to be seen hide behind cubicle walls obscure the abomination
stretching over poofing arms “It goes with your eyes” say the women
“It looks so good on you” they say
or color blind? “I wouldn’t be caught dead in that thing”
the men groan “looks like tie-dye gone awry”
pack it away
never again
until the giver beckons me wear it again, swallow my fashion sense shame.
later, I walk alone on the street in Kenmore Square where the hip and chic
count coup and announce wardrobe prowess in long confident strides
noses held high and away from dirty groundlings then there’s me
no bones of thread artistry in this whole dumb sack sidewalk to square
(a triangle, really) divides like a concrete star upon the squares that follow
the blacktop, only he and I fashionisto and bland me raptor and pigeon
passing on the wing, wearing the same plumage our eyes lock a moment
as if to say
9:15pm, Last Flight to Nashville
It’s a dance through Detroit’s airport actually I’m running with luggage
muscles emasculated by 13 hours of hunger 6 hours of waiting on flights
delayed in some college party town (they’ll say it’s a storm)
but when I board the big thing they’ve run out of beer (it’s complementary)
19-year olds raided the liquor cabinet to death it seems I’ve been freezing my ass
off in nowhere New York waiting watching withering
for planes that didn’t come except in my many fantasies when books batteries ran dry
landing in De – troit only to discover all connections to Le Ville de Nash
disturbingly severed by the first flight’s lateness desperate for nourishment for a
companion to share bitter ironic maybe witty remarks (if they’re witty) wallowing
in this winter of discontent
own house I wait in zigzagged lines two hundred people long with only one
axeman executing sheep and another helping (or not helping) the same tubby
bald-headed couple for seventy-five superb minutes and thirty minutes left on the
last flight out and the minutes ticking down off and away into yesterday
forever I consider it
but remember my crisping contact lenses desiccating in red-cracked eyes
I’ll have to get rid of them then navigate Motor City while driving blind
The crowd stirs restless a woman angry talks at her kid with cusses for the
predicament she’s in desperate dying to leave but afraid of losing my
two-hour spot I grab a working woman passing by and beg for help
her eyes look at me like a starving Ethiopian wasting to sticks awaiting a ticket
to the States she slips me a secret number in a huddled exchange and five
minutes later she snatches a spot at 9:09pm boarding one minute ago
a quarter mile away somehow I reach the gate to freedom
runway lights like pulsing diamonds fallen through a torn night pocket left scattered
on the slate tarmac for the long-nosed birds to solely subsist upon (this strict diet of
paying passengers only to shit them out somewhere else for some other bird to suck up
incestuous pornographic take your pick) we lift off thrust into fluffed sky
strewn with cotton candy colors and away into the dark night
one last flight to Nashville 9:19pm free at last.
About the Poet
Ethan Cunningham’s short works appear in print, on-screen, and on the stage. Most recently, his publications include pieces in Abstract Elephant, New Plains Review, and Topical Poetry. Although we live in uncertain times, his hope is that each of us can find comfort in discovering the universality of the human experience through poetry.