it's chrismas time in the mountains


Bryan Gysin, Play it Cool, 1963


Christmas Morning Without Presents: The Depression, Granite City, Illinois
-- by Ellery Akers

It is 1929. The moon falls on the floor,
the pantry is empty, beans hardening like rocks in the
cans.
No, you did not expect this.
The same cracked wall with its stains,
odor of your mother's cleaning fluid,
curtains with their clean hems,
blowing in and out.
You touch the bones and lumps of the chair,
the broken wireless with its dial, you pick up a spoon,
and it's cold. A clock ticks. The chipped plates
fill up with the moon.
You look back at the window,
tubes and vats of the factories
quiet for once.
The garbage truck rolls up the alley,
the bristles of the streetcleaner's brush rasp on the
pavement.
Your hand closes on the doorknob, quietly.
You begin to carry the stone of your childhood:
The moon. The empty room. It will be yours.

Keeping Things Whole
-- by Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

* A Junky's Christmas, by Mr. William Burroughs.

* In DC? The Foreign Press have two January shows:

-- Saturday January 13, 2007 Dust Congress Presents An Evening of Music and Film featuring:

The Foreign Press and Let's French (and TBD)@ DCAC (adams morgan, wdc). FREE. doors at 9pm.

-- Sunday January 7, 2007 @ the red and the black. with Sweater Weather and Mikal Evans. $7. doors at 9pm. we go on last.

Happy Holidays. Posting light, if at all, till next year.