Santa Claws

I’m walking through the borrego desert

and a piece of lightning catches my flesh

like a zipper zipped too fast

I do not break

this sensation comes like rain

but since I’ve moved to California

I’m used to thunder outside my spine

I look into the cloud:

an old car with a man inside

a man who looks like my father

or at least what I know my father looks like

a bald head

white beard

round belly

and frosty skin

it’s the tenth anniversary since I’ve seen his face

all I have is a description

for all I know, my dad could be Santa Claus

arriving once a year

I know this is lousy metaphor for my abandonment

but when you’re Jewish

Santa loses jolly texture

no Christmas

no dripping sleighbells

no coal stuffed stocking

naughty and nice lay upside down

empty

check

you are not on his list

check

at the bus stop a boy recalls

the book where the baby bird falls from its nest

and repeats to strangers

are you my mother?

in brooklyn

he says

they ask, “Are you my daddy?”

laughing at my jagged punchlines

the ho ho ho

shuddering thunder at the mall

and the target parking lot

Are you my daddy

the chinese restaurant

Are you

the movie theatre

you

you know it’s the holidays

when you find familiar faces on strange skin

christmas carols shriek hail

pouring down undetermined ifs

if you were a figment

a fig ready to shrivel before

I grow beneath beatings

radiating memories bleeding mourning

it is christmas morning

and a knock echoes through my hollow house

I look through the window

and find lightning bouncing

no it’s snow

let it snow

let it snow

let it blizzard through me

the face that I see everywhere

is blizzarding through the window

finally cold enough

It’s the real Santa

sleigh bells bang

I tell rebecca

get up stairs

get up

float away or drown in ice

Santa screams

open the fucking door you cunt

reindeer gallop and clang

I am so glad we don’t have a chimney

for him to crawl down

no fireplace to beg for coal

mama’s out for milk and no cookies

and Santa Claus

claws at us

less saint and more bear

I can’t bear it

bare bones whispering

you are not real

you are not real

you are just a reel trying to catch me

I’m no longer a fish

I’m a woman in girls skin

skinning this ideal alive

this searching in empty pockets of my lungs

leaving the mall

filling the target parking lot

chinese restaurant and movie theater

washing lightning from my lips

clouds part an hour later

Santa leaves two rolex watches outside

I close the door

realizing it was never locked

I’m 12

and I stop believing.