For Lack of Something True to Say: Christmas Cards

On Not Flying to Hawaii

I could be the waitress
in the airport restaurant
full of tired cigarette smoke and unseeing tourists.
I could turn into the never-noticed landscape
hanging identically in all the booths
or the customer behind the Chronicle
who has been giving advice
about stock portfolios for forty years. I could be his mortal weariness,
his discarded sports section, his smoldering ashtray.

I could be the 70-year-old woman who has never seen Hawaii,
touching her red lipstick and sprayed hair.
I could enter the linen dress
that poofs around her body like a bridesmaid,
or become her gay son
sitting opposite her, stirring another sugar
into his coffee for lack of something true to say.
I could be the reincarnated soul of the composer
of the Muzak that plays relentlessly overhead,
or the factory worker who wove this fake Oriental carpet,
or the hushed shoes of the busboy.

But I don't want to be the life of anything in this pitstop.
I want to go to Hawaii, the wet, hot
impossible place in my heart that knows just what it desires.
I want money, I want candy.
I want sweet ukelele music and birds who drop from the sky.
I want to be the volcano who lavishes
her boiling rock soup love on everyone,
and I want to be the lover
of volcanos, who loves best what burns her as it flows.

Alison Luterman

26.10.09

Christmas Cards

I've decided this year to have Christmas cards made with pictures on them, rather than buy the typical ones. At first this excited me, now it's stressing me out a bit. I feel like I have to tell the story of my life, of the past year, in three pictures. Is that even possible? So much has happened to me. I have the card picked out, but I keep going back and forth trying to decide on which pictures to use. Paris, Germany with Dad, Grayson, Coen, the beach, birthday, etc.etc.etc. How do I narrow down a year into three images?

2 comments:

Ashley said...: So, you HAVE to include a pic of Grayson and a pic of your trip... with your Dad. Those are a given, right?; October 30, 2009 at 9:22 PM
Sarah said...: I don't know. I am having someone come take some pictures for me. I don't know if I want to put Grayson on it or not. A little too much for me.; November 1, 2009 at 10:36 AM