Tyson West
American Legion Silent Night
I cannot spiral past the American Legion nee The Metals Building
These four decades down the wrinkling gyre of my brain chemistry
Without admiring its awnings and pseudo star sticked windows
Geometric stepped patterned roof steeply defining
Its dormers lipsticked during each remodel
Above the ever changing bars inebriating its street level.
Inevitably as well I return to the question
Of a baby who or may not have been
But definitely is not now.
The Belleau Wood marine turned garbage man dyeing tan
The polyester curtains of my rental house during the fall of Saigon
With the incessant flow of bare assed Chesterfield smoke
Heard his wife, an old nurse
After stubbing out her Kool pause,
Raise her fine plucked eyebrow, and spin her tale
Of young people during the 1918 flu epidemic dropping dead
In doctors’ waiting rooms at the massif of the Paulsen Building.
The old man hacked, scratched his crotch and glanced at his woman
Applauded by my wonder
Then raised her the tale of he and his bud
Gleaning galvanized cans one Christmas Eve
At The Metals Building where they found the soft pink
Of the newborn cold and stiff inside a can
They had unsheathed from its lid.
Grateful for work during the Great Depression
They nodded to one another and dumped the can and corpse into their barge exhaling its tetraethyl lead exhaust
Charon and Hermes silently in red felt trimmed with white fur
Psychopomped the child seen alive only by his mother to the landfill.
The not baby Jesus as his body dissolved,
Rose to life over draft beer, coffee and eggnog
Into a tale often repeated into blue carcinogenic haze
Purified by the old man’s lungs and lips
And the applause of his listeners’ gasps.
These four decades down the wrinkling gyre of my brain chemistry
Without admiring its awnings and pseudo star sticked windows
Geometric stepped patterned roof steeply defining
Its dormers lipsticked during each remodel
Above the ever changing bars inebriating its street level.
Inevitably as well I return to the question
Of a baby who or may not have been
But definitely is not now.
The Belleau Wood marine turned garbage man dyeing tan
The polyester curtains of my rental house during the fall of Saigon
With the incessant flow of bare assed Chesterfield smoke
Heard his wife, an old nurse
After stubbing out her Kool pause,
Raise her fine plucked eyebrow, and spin her tale
Of young people during the 1918 flu epidemic dropping dead
In doctors’ waiting rooms at the massif of the Paulsen Building.
The old man hacked, scratched his crotch and glanced at his woman
Applauded by my wonder
Then raised her the tale of he and his bud
Gleaning galvanized cans one Christmas Eve
At The Metals Building where they found the soft pink
Of the newborn cold and stiff inside a can
They had unsheathed from its lid.
Grateful for work during the Great Depression
They nodded to one another and dumped the can and corpse into their barge exhaling its tetraethyl lead exhaust
Charon and Hermes silently in red felt trimmed with white fur
Psychopomped the child seen alive only by his mother to the landfill.
The not baby Jesus as his body dissolved,
Rose to life over draft beer, coffee and eggnog
Into a tale often repeated into blue carcinogenic haze
Purified by the old man’s lungs and lips
And the applause of his listeners’ gasps.
Biography
Tyson West has published a lot of poetry, including haiku, traditional western poetry, free verse and experimental poetry and form verse and had two of his poems were nominated for Pushcart Prizes. His Steampunk short story, “The Wulver”, was published in Voluted Tales and “The Thirteenth Victim”, a vampire short story was included in an anthology called “You Can’t Kill Me I’m Already Dead”. He received third place for the Second Annual Kalanithi award in 2018 for his rondel “Under the Bridge”.
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