Christmas Bird
Does Indiana have a Christmas bird? I saw a lot of juncos
today but that just means I filled my birdfeeders this morning.
Ho ho ho, the Christmas bird would probably be red
or live in a pear tree. It’s snowing, the dead not blinking
inside their graves all across the northern moraines.
This is a fact—I still get spam in my email inbox
on Jesus’s birthday (Please take our CVS survey and win
a gift card!). I don’t mean to get argumentative but you
have to be kind before folks will line up to help you through
your dying days. It doesn’t work the other way around—
the sudden gift of a golden pheasant on your Christmas plate.
The snow keeps falling because that’s what happens, the automobiles
of the poor abandoned on roadsides. One Christmas decoration
I saw in Angola was just an ordinary, functioning, barber’s pole.
I don’t know why the cashier at Target, where I bought
a new pair of wireless headphones this morning, was wearing pigtails,
a blue jumper and skirt, no leggings and clogs in December—
kind of like a tropical bird. Would she get your vote for Christmas bird?
No one else I know would have the audacity. The cardinal is a too-obvious
choice for a Christmas bird but what about a rotisserie chicken?
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If It’s Not One Thing…
Living in a commune must be nice, sitting
in a hardback chair or on the floor, an interregnum—
estrangement from the polity, one long uninterrupted
shot of the curtains drifting back and forth across
the face of the moon while using a handheld camera.
My aging arms ache just thinking about it—
epicurean daydream—12 vintners wearing cowboy
boots, flush with free will, alongside seven miniature
ponies and a pet cow in Ramona, California…
Location, location, location. In fact, everyone’s half-nude
this morning, holding hands, a ballistic missile whistling low across
the Pacific Ocean, heading our way, from just west of Pyongyang.
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David Dodd Lee is the author of thirteen books of poetry, including the forthcoming The Bay (Broadstone Books, Fall, 2025) and Dead Zones, the Dictionary Sonnets (Wolfson Press, Summer, 2025). His poems have appeared in Southeast Review, New Ohio Review, Ocean State Review, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Guesthouse, Copper Nickel, TriQuarterly, The Nation, and Willow Springs. He teaches at Indiana University South Bend, where he is Editor-in-Chief of 42 Miles Press, as well as the online literary journal The Glacier. You can see some of his poetry and visual art on Instagram @davidlee2588.
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Stone Poetry Quarterly 