New Year’s Eve eve, thinking I’ll wear
my Christmas coat, down-filled Kühl,
a Spyfire parka, ribbed and shapely.
And I think cutting is better than pulling
the stray goose feather pricking out
but don’t count on the slice of scissor tip
in virgin nylon before I’ve christened it
with one dinner with friends, hoppin’ John
and collards for luck, one nearly January
night on the cusp of whatever promise
we imagine when the calendar turns.
I rush for thread to seal my thinking/not
thinking, my careless nick damned
with every stitch. Is this what the new
year holds before the tags are off
and the glitter ball drops, a tear so quick
and blind in the fabric, shiny and close
as skin, this buttoned body, chin up
and shoulders back, skating over every
sidewalk crack. Will this patch under
my left arm ever be seen by anyone but me,
I who know that errors come and go—
though look how neatly the floss blends,
more birthmark than blemish; look how
it puckers like a tiny, furtive kiss as the clock
strikes twelve, like a sip from that last
cup o’ kindness taken no matter how
broken the lip, the auld wick burnt down
to hope against the longest dark.
Poet, playwright, essayist, and editor, Linda Parsons is also the poetry editor for Madville Publishing and the copy editor for Chapter 16, the literary website of Humanities Tennessee. Her work is published in such journals as American Life in Poetry, Baltimore Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Southern Poetry Review, Terrain, The Chattahoochee Review, and The Georgia Review. Her sixth collection, Valediction, contains poems and prose. Five of her plays have been produced by Flying Anvil Theatre in Knoxville, Tennessee.
