Poems

The Last ThanksgivingThe air tastes of char and ash.Before them, the world ends in fissures—dry earth splitting like old skin,skeletal trees reaching for nothing. Sarah stirs the pot. Flame-licked shadowsdance across her face.You really think we can pull this off?We don’t even have a turkey. Matthew laughs, hollow as the space between stars.It’s not about […]

The Little Blizzard On The Shelf [Wreath]There is a snow globe on your dresser that has seen more midnights than you will ever admit, glass bowed slightly from age, base chipped where a younger you knocked it sideways in a fit and then pretended it never happened,Inside, a miniature town curls under permanent frost, plastic

The Hearth That Hungers [Wraith]Winter comes in sideways, knifing through the window gaps and under every crooked doorframe,and the family drifts toward the fireplace like tired moths, hands wrapped around chipped mugs, chasing heat they swear they’ve earned by surviving another year of this mess and calling it tradition,nobody really looking too closely at the

The Holiday SwapThe Johnsons call Christmas their own—a mansion rigged with white columns,gold trim catching the roofline’s sprawl,each light a small fire of excess. Emily surveys her kingdom, reachesfor a crystal snowflake on the lowest branch,tilts it until rainbows scatteracross the burgundy walls. Perfect,she whispers. It has to be perfect. — Three miles east, Maria

The Jingle That Moved Into My Skull [Wreath]It started in the grocery store aisle between canned yams and discount batteries, that cursed four-note hook sliding out of a ceiling speaker that has seen more holidays than any of us deserve,Just a chirpy little melody for peppermint-flavored something, riding on handclaps and fake sleigh bells, catchy

The Ghosts of Christmas DebtSnow drifts past frosted panes.Arthur slumps in tattered upholstery,the dim glowcasting shapes that shift like guiltacross walls where last year’s decorationsstill hang in shame. A string of crooked lightsflickers above him—mismatched, dim,his sense of festivityas faded as the chair itself. Outside, distant sleigh bellsjingle his nameand the apparitions come:formed from financial

The Haunted WreathWe found it buried in the atticunder boxes of forgotten seasons—my wife Clara and I,clearing cobwebs from the storage space above the garage,preparing for the holidays.My fingers brushed somethingthat felt both wrong and strangely known. An antiquated Christmas wreath.Its green, once alive, now spectral—pale as bone left in winter sun.I brushed away the

The Black Friday MassacreThe fluorescent lights flicker,casting their sickly palloracross marble floors still slickwith the residue of a thousandfrenzied transactions.The doors are sealed.Someone — capitalism itself,maybe — has locked the cageand swallowed the key. “Did you hear that?”Lisa’s voice fractures the stillness.She’s clutching a bag of discounted electronicslike a life raft.Her eyes scan the shadows.“What

The Emotional Holiday of MiseryDecember wind tore at the windowpanes,rattling them like loose teeth,a bleak reminder of the world outside—that cold indifferent world that didn’t careabout the maxed-out card in her walletor the fridge that held only discount bologna,its label curling like her will to survive. Clara sat at the table,fingers tracing the edge of

Ten Minutes to Midnight, On Repeat [Wraith]The sign outside The Pit blinks like a dying confession, red tubes buzzing over rain-streaked glass that’s been smeared by a thousand nervous hands and one or two drunken apologies no one remembers making,while inside the room smells like old fryer grease, cheap beer, and the recycled breath of