Poems

Silent Night, Unholy NightThe night cracked sharp with children’s laughter,mugs of cocoa steaming,breath clouding the airbetween houses strung with fallen stars.Pine and gingerbread—their carolers ambled down the streetuntil the trees swallowed them whole. Let’s try O Holy Night,Lily shouted, cheeks burning,adjusting her scarf with its white snowflakes.Only if you stop butchering the high notes,Mark teased,blue […]

Small-Scale Sorcery In A Striped Sock [Wreath] The living room looks like a holiday bomb went off in slow motion, tinsel strangling the curtain rod, fairy lights knotted like a nervous system having a panic attack,and right in the center of it all hangs the real crime scene, stockings sagging from the mantle like cloth

Scented Mischief at the Door [Wreath]The door keeps swinging on that loose old hinge, letting in winter in short sharp bursts, every entrance a slap of cold air that sneaks under my shirt and climbs my spine with icy fingers, while outside the street smells like dirty snow, exhaust, and last minute shopping regrets fermenting

Seven Flames and a Room Full of Ghosts [Wraith]Winter pressed its cold face flat against the windows, breathing frost into every corner like a bored god tracing fingerprints on the glass,Heat groaned through tired vents, doing its half-assed best, while the living room pulled in tight around the low table draped in colors that meant

Santa’s Last StandIn the year they outlawed wonder, the streetsturned iron. Gates clanged shut. Sirens calledlike hungry things across the frozen city.Christmas became a crime.Joy, a pestilence. Gus wore his red suit threadbare,beard gone gray as ash, and stoodin a basement lit by one thin stringof fairy lights, flickering, fading,casting shapes against concrete walls. When

Santa’s Midnight Hunger [Wraith]They tell kids to leave cookies and a glass of milk beside the tree like it is some sweet, wholesome treaty with the night,A small sugar tithe on a chipped plate, crumbs lined up like innocent constellations in the glow of plastic reindeer light,Parents sell the ritual with soft voices and sleepy

Saint Nick On The Ninth Floor [Wraith]Down in the stairwell nobody uses, past the peeling EXIT sign and the one bulb that hums like it’s chewing on its own nerves,There’s a door you don’t remember in the fire plan, painted the color of dried blood and bad decisions, warped at the curves.It’s marked with a

Salt-Stained Flags and Holiday Sales [Wraith]They teach it like a fairy story in paper hats and glitter,bright posters of a smiling captain cutting the ocean open like it asked for it,three wooden coffins with sails crawling across a map that forgets who was already home,kids off school so the mall can hang banners about “Discovery

Reruns in Chipped Porcelain [Wreath]Midnight sneaks in sideways through the blinds, not with drama but with that quiet blue glow that wraps the living room once every December when nobody is quite ready to surrender this night to sleep yet,TV light paints the walls in flickering rectangles of snowstorms and cartoon forests, old holiday specials

Rotten Hallelujah In Pastel Shells [Wraith]Sunday morning crawls in on knees of mud and frost, graveyard grass still frozen in last night’s whisper of snow,Kids in cheap suits and itchy dresses stomp along the path, shoes slicked with polish and someone else’s hope in tow.The church up the hill rings its bells like everything’s forgiven,