The lone reindeer wanders through the small forest
a new forest grown from ashes
(an old forest gone so soundly
with a zap of electric lightning)
On his head the antlers
(seen from the window
of a cabin
where children
have just made mincemeat of wrapping paper
and now crawl across the floor with trains
and sit in chairs, reading
and combing tiny heads of hair
and applying glitter to glue to paper)
The reindeer is alone
because he had had enough
and he told Santa so
He had got education
those 11 1/2 months off
(while everyone else obsessed about sports
and fawns)
he read Malcolm X
So one Christmas Day
while his buddies were sleeping it off
He left a message scratched by antlers
on Santa's door
"No more pulling for the man."
and headed off across the longest meadow
he would ever cross
in search of the hype
and the counter-narrative



Posted by Evan Nichols on 1/20/08; 10:46:46 PM from the The Writer's Notebook dept.