by Charles Kraszewski
Stepladders have sprouted all over middle America and Mr. Jones,
who bears a name both legitimate and taxonomic,
is busy tempting fate and insurance policy
by strangling his split-level in festive Christmas lights.
“Well, hello there!” booms his tympanous baritone
as if from the depths of a Mercury Theatre Production.
His son followed him to Cornell with faltering tread;
his daughter is overweight and unpopular.
But Mr. Jones can lay the fury of any tempest-tossed surf
by casting thereon the oil of his golden larynx;
he can take any bull by whichever horn in his firm handshake
and wrestle him to the dust with steady, smiling gaze.
When they leave, signed up at rates higher than they budgeted for,
they don’t notice the banderillas sprouting from their bloody shoulders
until the waitress at the coffee shop points them out.
Mr. Jones is not yet a partner at his firm.
But all the partners stand in fear of Mr. Jones.
It is the Christmas season, Black Friday is here, tra la la,
and there are more targets in Mr. Jones’ holiday display
— Six foot snowmen of inch-thick plywood
Modernistic Walmart reindeer that look like origami —
than in any other in this abominable cul-de-sac
that torments the palpitating hillside.
And yet, his fan-fed plastic snow-dome is never punctured,
His hollow baby Jesus unmolested;
stone-cored snowballs drop from the mittens
of local pisspants when spree reaches Orchard Circle.
I have never seen him pout or lose his temper.
I have never heard him gossip or be vulgar.
His attention to the suburban fasti
is both meticulous and detached.
In the blue depths of his soul
dwells the unspeakable
primordial
sagacity of a numen
we profane ones can neither fathom nor defile.