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What neither junior nor his father know is that she sees him every time he calls. The off-season, mostly. So it isn't true that Santa only comes once a year. She does her hair, her makeup, and puts on the little black dress he likes so much, and her heels. She goes to meet him in some little out-of-the-way joint downtown. It's difficult for a high-profile guy like Santa to be discreet. What does she see in him anyway? Overweight and god knows how old, red faced, slack-jawed and snoring now in room 308 of the Seafarer's Hotel? Well, it's true, he can be fun, his humor and generosity are legendary. But she sees this can't last. Perhaps though, despite her slight feeling of disappointment and the obvious impossibility of the whole affair, she still holds out some faint hope. A belief in something wondrous about to happen, that somehow this year will be better than last.
Louis Jenkins lives in Duluth, Minnesota. His poems have been published in a number of literary magazines and anthologies, including Kenyon Review, Paris Review and American Poetry Review. His books of poetry include An Almost Human Gesture (Eighties Press and Ally Press, 1987), All Tangled Up With the Living (Nineties Press, 1991), Nice Fish: New and Selected Prose Poems (Holy Cow! Press, 1995, Just Above Water (Holy Cow! Press, 1997) and The Winter Road (Holy Cow! Press, 2000. Two of his prose poems were published in The Best American Poetry 1999 (Scribner, 1999) |
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