Christmas Scenes, by Rachel Walker

Oplatek, Christmas Wafers. photo by Silar, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Christmas Scenes

A dusting of snow on the leaves 
of grandmother’s Japanese maple. 
We find a spider frozen in its web: 
red leaves strung by silver thread.

*
 
Grandfather holds the Christmas wafer 
above his dinner plate. Nativity in wheat: 
evening light on the Holy Family gleams,
bloodless. Beneath a pale star, a mother 

kneels in adoration, beams of starlight 
cutting through clasped hands. She is 
as cold as the word that we withhold 
until it shimmers in our dreams. 

Bread of the beating heart, 
cast your shadow on our meal. 

Grandfather breaks the face of the mother.
I eat her mouth; she is moondust on the tongue. 

*

Always the shuffle of footsteps from 
the other side. Stooped over the kitchen 
counter, grandfather pares celery 
into moth’s wings. I am pressing 

my hand to glass. A draft of wind tosses 
celery into the air. In the door frame, 
cold hair tethers the darkness curled around 
her. She steps inside and begins to thaw, 

her cheeks incarnadine.

 Mother, your palms 
are cut like mine. On Christmas morning I wake 
in the Green Chapel, having dreamt my skin 
is tinged purple with the sunspots on your cheek.

Rachel Walker

Rachel Walker is a poet from Maryland. She currently lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, where she is an MFA candidate at UNLV. Her work has previously appeared in The Shore, Thimble Literary Magazine, and Mud Season Review.