WEBVTT

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This is a persona poem in
the voice of Santa Claus.

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At the North Pole.

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My wife sleeps tucked
against my arm dreaming

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of gifts I can't give her.

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Palm trees, buckets
of sand, and shells

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she can hold against her ear,
listening to a sea without ice.

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She'll press her cheek
against the window

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until her skin turns white
in a round patch she won't

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let me kiss, waiting
for neighbors who

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never drive 1,000 miles north.

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She claims the elves
watch her undress.

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I've seen her.

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I've seen her stick needles
through cracks in our bedroom

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wall hoping to catch one drop
of blood from their damn eyes.

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Doesn't she hear them sneezing
all night in their beds

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above the barn, where they
look at their stiff fingers,

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unable to carve
even their names?

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I still get demanding
letters in the winter,

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and I write back, sorry.

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I have nothing
resembling dolls or tops.

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What you really need are false
teeth, a new cane, maybe,

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and glasses so
thick you'll at last

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see your own hands
tremble like mine

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do, smoothing my wife's hair.

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Outside I see my reindeers'
antlers in the bare trees,

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in the shadow.

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Sometimes at the far edge of
tundra I even see the herds

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and wonder if Dancer remembers
those years she was tame,

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or if Blitzen still has
the bell around his neck,

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although he doesn't
know why it rings.