Poetry from The Literary Review



Nativity Scenes

Jonah Winter


Maybe it’s a junkie on the corner shouting “Pippi Longstocking!”
at your girlfriend, who tries to hold you back
from a verbal confrontation ending in knife wounds
or teeth-marks or worse or

maybe it’s a basement full of strangers
drinking bad coffee and repeating those sad old lines
in a mantra of self-righteous syntax, stale clunkers
and a theological hybrid of confession and logical positivism or

maybe it’s the cab ride to Gracie Square Hospital,
escorting a woman who’s convinced that all those people out there
are actually dead, except of course for you, who just now
finally begins to see the practical dangers of surrealism or

maybe it’s the empty subway platform at 3 a.m., empty
except for you and the gentleman with the switch-blade
displayed but not opened for your viewing pleasure, accompanied nonetheless by the pithy “I’ll cut you up” or

maybe when you light a candle at the end
of a bad day while staring at a prayer card
of the Virgin Mary, atypically glassy-eyed just at the brink
of The Conception—it’s everything you can’t see.  



Polyptych Infinitum



(One figure is kneeling
outside the door
of the Virgin, whose gaze is fixed

on some invisible point
beyond the Latin script
unraveling out of the lips

of an angel who’s descending
from the window
in a slant of winter light.

The stone floor
is cold
and wind can be heard

through the wall.
In the distance, it’s evening
already, it’s next year

and everyone’s leaving,
backs turned, all of them
diminishing, entering

the end of November.
The record of Gregorian chants
is over, and other sounds

emerge: someone’s coat
rustling, a guard talking
to another guard

in some other room,
footsteps getting louder.
The North Star

shines directly above
the cradle.
Someone sneezes.

The Magi look surprised,
their faces almost purple
with wonder, as sheep and cows

nudge in between them.
With several “Excuse me’s,”
a tall man

hurries away
from the starlit gathering,
dropping his umbrella,

bending over
to pick it up,
dropping it again . . .)