and some you crack open your silver gun
and there’s seeds there like blood already freezing
ready to stand tall at high midnight
ready to fire so fucking loyal, so sweet,
like every girl who ever said no
turning around at once and opening their arms.
And your honor’s out on the table, all cards hid.
And by your honor I mean my honor,
and by my honor I mean everything in me, always, forever,
everything in a body that knows
what to do with six ruby bullets
and a horse the color of two in the morning.
That knows when the West tastes like death and an old paperback
you saddle your shit and ride East,
when you’re done with it all you don’t put down roots
and Drunk Bob says: come on, son, you’ve got that book to write
and I know a desk in the dark with your name on it.
And Witty old girl she sighs: you know what you have to do.
Seeds fire and bullets grow and I’m the only one who’s ever loved you.
That horse can go hang.
And I say: maybe I’ll get an MFA
and be King of the Underworld
in some sleepy Massachusetts town.
And all the while my honor’s tossed into the pot
and by my honor I mean your honor
or else what’s this all about? Drunk Bob
never did know where this thing was going
but I guess the meat of it is how Bob is strong and I am strong
and Witty is a barrel of futures, and we are all of us
unstopping, unending, unbeginning:
we keep moving. You gotta keep moving.
Six red bullets will show the way down.
We all have to bring the cows in.
I am here to tell you
we are all of us just as mighty as planets—and you too,
we’ll let you in, we’ve got stalwart to spare—
but you might have to sleep on the floor.
Me and Bob and Witty just
clop on and the gun don’t soften
and the horse don’t bother me with questions,
all of us just heading toward the red rhyme of the sunset
and the door at the bottom of the verse.
The secret of being a cowboy is
never sticking around too long and honor
sometimes looks like a rack of bones
still standing straight up at the end of both poems.
Twenty-Five Facts About Santa Claus
1. Santa Claus is real. However, your parents are folkloric constructs meant to protect and fortify children against the darknesses of the real world. They are symbols representing the return of the sun and the end of winter, the sacrifice of the king and the eternal fecundity of the queen. They wear traditional vestments and are associated with certain seasonal plants, animals, and foods. After a certain age, no intelligent child continues believing in their parents, and it is embarrassing when one professes such faith after puberty. Santa Claus, however, will never fail us.
2. The current Santa Claus was once a boy. He is from Canada, not from Turkey or Scandanavia as some would suggest. When the Franklin expedition perished seeking the Northwest Passage, Santa Claus watched them die on the ice, a young man, emaciated, cold, wrapped in a red cloak. He was very sorry, but it was not Yuletime, and he had no power to save them.
3. The current Santa Claus took over his present position from Santa Lucia, who up until the 19th century rode a donkey into young children’s homes, bearing lavish gifts, espresso, and currant-cakes. If one was naughty, Lucia’s donkey would kick the embers of the fire in the offending child’s eyes, blinding them. Espresso was a magical drink which Lucia alone knew how to make, until a dastardly Italian baker stole the recipe in a daring and adventurous escapade. Its contemporary cousins are much diluted from the original. Santa Lucia took over from the Bishop of Constantinople, a very tall, skinny fellow. Everyone makes the winter office their own, however, and our Claus made several changes to the decor.
4. Santa Lucia sometimes still appears to certain children at Christmas-time. She is retired, but not dead or uninterested in the world. However, children are practical sorts, and rarely appreciate the dense currant cakes and highly caffeinated coffee Lucia bears to them. Nor do they have the first idea what to do with her gifts, which are more often than not complex bronze, iron, or bone devices bearing a family resemblance to the Antikythera Mechanism. Still, as with any peculiar maiden aunt, it is the thought that counts.
5. Before taking up his current office, Santa Claus worked at a textile factory in London. He showed already some ability at crossing large distances quickly, stowing aboard a steamship hoping for a new life in the Old World. He lost his pinky finger in a loom, but sent money home to his family in Canada as a good son does. It was sometime around then that he met a girl named Lucia with hair the color of candlelight, and one will make no assumptions about anything untoward occurring between them.
6. Santa Claus is a tax-exempt entity under the laws of several Pole-adjacent nations. This began as a kind of good-natured joke among legislatures seeking to appear jolly, publicly announcing such a reprieve before adjourning for Christmas nog and poppyseed loaf, but has proved quite useful for Santa, as he takes in a tremendous amount of raw material during the year and should not like to have to calculate 30% of a magical pony with pink-floss hair and fiery breath.
7. The elves are really quite a complicated situation. They were summarily dismissed from Europe sometime after Rome fell (you’ll find elves to be sullen and recalcitrant on this topic, should you press for exact dates and place-names) and had resettled above the Arctic Circle in a network of villages called Tyg-qir-Mully, raised by snow-chant and a long and patient seduction of the ice. In their glittering towns they lived and drank gluhwein and worked their weaving. Some say that the presence of so many elves in one place, so much magic in one region, simply created an empty space in the universe that Santa Claus could fill like a key. Some say it was rank colonization by a piece of European folklore that broke off and floated away. Either way, a house appeared in the center of Tyg-qir-Mully, hung with glittering icicles and sweet round doors, and eventually, someone came to live in it and took on a mythologically lucrative profession and a logical labor-sharing commune was established among all the Mully-folk.
8. Santa Claus is concerned about the problem of Arctic ice. The ice is the spouse of the elves, and she is sick. She is the primary source of their magic, as the elves cannot be separated from the place where they live. For many years now, this is all they have asked for for Christmas: that the ice should come back.
9. Once an elf-Queen by the name of Gyfwoss rode her royal seal out onto the ice plain and called down the moon. She lifted her arms above her head and her hair turned blue and the moon drifted down the sky like a white petal. She held it in her arms like a child and somehow she was big enough, or it was small enough. She asked the moon for a gift and in her hands it turned into a pale silver present, wrapped with a sprig of pine and a lavender bow. When she took it home and opened it in her innermost chamber, she found a glass wedding ring. Once a year the moon turns into a very nice man with white hair and knocks on her door. Santa sometimes calls Gyfwoss Mrs. Claus, but everyone knows she is married to the moon, forever and for all time.
10. Santa Claus has only been seen seven times in all of his long career. This is a very good record. Mainly, he is seen because he wants to be. That or the reindeer give him away. The most recent sighting was in France, little Marguerite Lysan was sleeping in the back room of a cafe where her friend worked the morning baking shift. She didn’t see him because she deserved it more than other people. She didn’t see him because she was special. She saw him because a reindeer was lonely. She didn’t wake up when the man in red came into the house, but before midnight passed she
felt a soft velvet nose nuzzle her hand, and then more, lightly fuzzed antlers beneath her fingers. She smiled as she opened her eyes, and saw a pair of eyes, deep and black, with stars in them.
11. Santa Claus actually met Jesus once, when they were both very young. Santa wasn’t even called Claus yet, and he didn’t wear red. He was just thin and tired and alone, and so was Jesus, and they shared some wine and talked about what it was like to be folklorically dense nexus points. You really can’t understand something like that without experiencing it. At the time no one even believed in them yet; they were just knots of colliding memes, waiting for their destiny, the way kids do after high school but before college, sitting out on that bridge over the river, kicking their feet out into the air, wondering what they’re going to be when they grow up.
12. Santa Claus doesn’t really like cookies and is lactose-intolerant. He doesn’t mind, though. He knows that it’s quite literally the thought that counts. Cookies are quantum clusters with a raspberry swirl and chocolate chips. They tell him who he is. They say: you are hot and sweet and alive, even in the cold, and in at least three other universes you wear purple. Without cookies, he might lose his moorings, and on a journey like his, you cannot afford to take a wrong turn down some pulsar-strewn alley.
13. The Coca-Cola Company sometimes claims to have invented the modern version of Santa Claus. That’s not true. What happened was that somewhere between the former terribly exciting coca-leaf-heavy recipe and the more staid “classic Coke” batches, a young cola-chef put forward and produced several cases of an experimental soft drink that induced in the entire board of Coca-Cola a series of fever dreams in which they were chased by a certain red-cloaked figure through a dark wood, their blood shrieking in their limbs, terror clutching at their throats, the smell of holly and Christmas everywhere and then, oh, the spear! Most of the board never quite recovered their wits, the cola-chef was summarily dismissed, and thereafter, the man in red begins to appear in Coca-Cola’s wintertime advertisements.
14. As to how Santa Claus delivers all those presents in one night, it has seemed clear for some time that he possesses a localized wormhole small enough to pack into a reasonably-sized steamer trunk and tidy enough to not smell too musty when taken out for the holidays.
15. It is probable that the silver jingle bells comprise a renewable energy source for the wormhole, being as they are the remains of superdense stars attached to his sleigh with red string.
16. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are not related, though of course they have had professional dealings, both of them being warriors, standing watch on either side of the winter. Santa feels it is rather cruel of the Bunny to hide the eggs, and the Bunny feels Santa makes the whole business rather too easy. It is a little known fact that the summer solstice and the autumn equinox also had champions. The Summer Horse brought dark red cherries and highly munchable tomatoes along with gifts of sunshine and unfrozen seas and little iron ponies mysteriously appearing on the mantle. The Autumn Maiden sat on a throne of pumpkins and whatever vessel she touched filled with steaming cider or cocoa. Children buried wishes written on bits of paper in the cooling earth, so that they would come up in the spring like tulips. Santa and the Bunny are all that’s left. Sometimes they miss their family, but they understand all too well the fragility of the consumer holiday cycle, and how thin the ropes that tie it to myth, like a boat barely tied to the pier.
17. During the rest of the year, Santa Claus sleeps. And studies advanced mathematics.
18. Santa Claus doesn’t need a chimney. A house is a closed system, and at one time the chimney was the only reasonable approach. It was the only vampire-proof entrance to a domicile, the doors being guarded by the invitation addendum and the chimney itself being far too filthy for the obsessive-compulsive vampire to bear. Santa Claus does not wish to be taken for a vampire. Vampires take, Santa Claus leaves. It’s not the same thing at all. But it is impossible to specifically invite Santa Claus, only to tacitly do so by the laying out of stockings, etc. Santa entered where he could. But these days, vigilance against vampires is extremely lax, and he can come through the front door without issue.
19. The list isn’t about naughty and nice. If you think about it, coal is a very useful present. Santa Claus isn’t a monster. You can burn that coal and stay warm in the winter. Just because it is black and grimy and it isn’t a fantastical electronic intelligent machine with a kung-fu grip and a pre-installed game suite doesn’t mean it’s not beautiful and warm and formed over millennia in the heart of the earth and very occasionally the difference between life and death. The list is about whether or not you need to figure out the lesson of the coal.
20. The stockings you hang up aren’t the size of your own feet. That would be silly—you need those socks in the December nights. They are the size of Santa Claus’s feet, which are wide and flat to help him get around the Pole.
21. The reindeer are immortal. They are, in fact, the eight demiurges of reindeer-kind, and this accounts for their flying. Their name might sound whimsical, but they are the closest the human tongue can come to approximating the true names of the caribou lords. Rudolph, far from being the adorable, earnest fellow of the tale, is in fact Ruyd-al-Olafforid, the All-Destroying Flame of the Yukon. His mother was Kali and his father was an ice floe. His nose appears red because his body is full of coals, and his eyes flare with a terrible conflagration of his soul. The tips of his antlers are like candles in the snowy wind. He is not vengeful, but he is the light in the dark of winter, consuming and giving life at the same time. Your carrots only make the lord of flame stronger.
22. Once, there was a war in Santa Claus’s kingdom. No one likes to speak of it. This was a very long time ago. It was not at Christmastime but during the summer when all in Tyg-qir-Mully is banked and waned and quiet. The duke of the orcas, Blig, wished to not only possess the wormhole and the steamer trunk that contained it but also eat the queen Gyfwoss’s royal seal, who was named Ghym and had a fondness for turkish delight. All were taken by surprise, and Blig’s hunger was very great. All pitied him, save the seal. Gyfwoss called down her spouse the moon and Blig ate it, such that when the moon rose back into the sky it took the body of Blig with it, and not only was the moon made much more beautiful by its new orca-coat, which you can see even now in the dark and light patterns on its surface, but Christmas, in a manner of speaking, was saved.
23. Santa Claus cannot see when you are sleeping, nor can he see when you are awake. He is not that kind of man and is a little put off by the suggestion. He has his own affairs to tend to, thank you very much.
24. Santa Claus is a perfect integration of the Id, the Ego, and the Superego. He is a perfect icon of integration. In his guise as this triple god he simultaneously indulges all the most decadent desires of food and drink and wealth in a single Morning of Receiving, is driven across the whole of the world on the Sleigh of Purposeful Dedication, and considers very seriously both the array of presents he will give and whether he will give them at all, the great Judge of the Self. Once Freud asked for a cigar box for Christmas. Santa Claus did not read anything into it.
25. There is always the chance that Santa Claus will not come this year. It has never happened, but in the realm of probabilities we must concede that there is that floating strange variable. Without that chance Santa Claus would not be what he is, rather, he would be something dependable and every day, like the tide or the wind, and no one would think twice about him. It is this chance which makes children so excited on Christmas Eve. You simply cannot know. For this reason it is vitally important, especially as one gets older, to ask for exactly what you want for Christmas, whether it be a unicorn that really talks or an artificial intelligence that will not destroy the world or a new job or someone to love you despite your being a know-it-all or a teddy bear or universal health care or the ability to finish things you start. Santa Claus does not judge wishes. He only wants you to be happy. He can’t do everything—he is only a constru
ct, not a constant. But he tries his very best to be good at his job, and every year, the sun grows a little stronger after he has passed through the world.
We Without Us Were Shadows
It seemed as if I were a non-existent shadow—that I neither spoke, ate, imagined, or lived of myself, but I was the mere idea of some other creature’s brain. The Glass Town seemed so likewise. My father…and everyone with whom I am acquainted, passed into a state of annihilation; but suddenly I thought again that I and my relatives did exist and yet not us but our minds, and our bodies without ourselves. Then this supposition—the oddest of any—followed the former quickly, namely, that WE without US were shadows; also, but at the end of a long vista, as it were, appeared dimly and indistinctly, beings that really lived in a tangible shape, that were called by our names and were US from whom WE had been copied by something—I could not tell what.
The Bread We Eat in Dreams Page 25