Plastic

Plastic

Alexis Ragan

Choirs sledding down their voice boxes on Second Street,
I stumble through the sleet of my sin, hallmark cards whistling
behind soda lime glass only to blind the pavement in regurgitated
phrases from festive past years and jolly prescriptions in ribbon,
where chimed the cracked ornament in the fracture of the slab,
she and him, even more naive, then having ached for mint hooks and
bottled air filled with spirit and pine to perfume the nativity scene,
both of them wishing now for this blueprint of their echoes in the alley,
bereft of bells in the clearing to finally be published in the parade,
so time knows not to drown out the meek. The soprano thinks
I’m winking at him, but it’s only a fleck of artificial snow in my eye.

They crawl back and forth barefoot in the candy store.
The garland droops, plastic
mutes the carol.

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Alexis Ragan
Poet & Teacher

Alexis Ragan is a poet and teacher. Her work has appeared in Alabaster Co and Calla Press. 

Photography by Elijah O’Donnell