—for Beckian

To talk about above and below is to miss the point,
gumming our own useless rye. Without the benefit
of a wife we might eat strange things,

things that make us remember what the mind
put a stop to, abject lessons that led us along
like a reinvented anthem or breathy hymn. And so,

the juleswain has been slain, sacrificed on the tiptoe,
given three days to rise and report gifts that might be
the dream of a daughter, when the other, the maid,

sometimes seen with a lantern, has other purposes
better than his. Her smile is better, rose lips offset
by starvation. He, on the other hand, has been overfed
since June, his offal, dried and braided, will burn
a propane red, the creeping flames marching.

We know his friendly names: Fence-Post,
Gully-Lad, Stump, Ladle-Licker, Sausage-
Grabber, Bowl-Licker, Window-Peeper, Candle-
Scrounger. Advancing his reputation.

But it’s what we planned. There’s no regimen
to a strategy of doubt—why the julemaid
holds up a light, to find the bluing skin of sleep…

And as you’ve suspected, there is a manger,
with a newborn pink and off-
steaming like a boiled vegetable.

His halo is a platter:
We’re nourished by the infant mind.

Christopher Burawa's, The Small Mystery of Lapses, won the Cleveland State University First Book Competition in 2005, and his translations of contemporary Icelandic poet Jóhann Hjálmarsson won the 2005 Toad Press International Chapbook Competition. He was awarded a MacDowell Colony fellowship in 2003, and a 2006 Witter Bynner Translation Residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute. He most recently received a 2007 Literature Fellowship for Translation from the National Endowment for the Arts. He currently is the Literature Director and Communications Director for the Arizona Commission on the Arts.