Choosing the Tree
We diary-match till everyone is free.
In scarves and gloves and hope we mobilise
for yearly quest to find the perfect tree.
Two factions, both alike in certainty:
one favours sculptural, the trunk on show,
the other fulsome, dense-green, thickety,
a centrepiece to hang with memory
and baubles from the years with our loved-lost;
pact with the past for future harmony.
We orbit, apogee and perigee,
each specimen presented, catwalk twirled
while we assess, dispute, grow prickly
as pines. More buyers come, see two – agree –
while we haul out our nineteenth, needled now,
Not that one! Are you kidding? Can’t you see?
The seller drags a fresh one, and Yippee
it hits all bases, holy grail of spruces!
Christmas is saved, and so is family.
Maggie Butt’s fifth collection was Degrees of Twilight (The London Magazine 2015). She teaches Creative Writing at Middlesex University and is a Royal Literary Fund Advisory Fellow. She spends Christmas with her husband, two daughters, nieces and partners. www.maggiebutt.co.uk
All that stuffing
My Uber burrows through the slush hour sleet.
Hounslow rises either side as reindeers pace
in arcade glitter over gables swollen with yule.
Privet hedges flicker like an electrocution of elves.
I’ve flown in late, gift-less, with a broken wing
that needs care but you will only notice a starling
tapping at your window, its starlit eye unclosing.
Hurrying things are cursed with love no one sees.
This car heater sucks in all the smells that belong
at the back of elsewhere behind ovens and bins;
all the human stuffing coming out for baby Jesus.
A plastic snowman stands where snow should be.
A courier curls up like a prawn by his motorbike
at the crossing as the traffic circumnavigates.
Two paramedics alight from a festive ambulance
in Santa hats while policemen bumble with tape.
I’d better text. You’ll never forgive me, ever
because I remember you my young sister opening
your advent calendar early, only to pop back
each cheery doorway like none of us had noticed,
as if the future of love was instantly knowable,
that Christmas was all that should ever matter.
Believe that the past is no more than torn paper,
then once a year, you can always be right.
Mark Fiddes’ poems have been published in The Irish Times, London Magazine, Magma, Poem Magazine and Southword. Some you’ll find in The Chelsea Flower Show Massacre or The Rainbow Factory – both published by Templar Poetry. He’s been awarded the Ruskin Prize, the Dromineer Festival Prize and was runner up in the Bridport Prize. Earlier this year, he had two poems shortlisted in the Keats-Shelley Prize.
Christmas Eve tea
5 o’clock.
Light silvers the sill.
This is the season of curious moons,
when we’re lost in the velvet of ourselves,
undreaming the deep nights
between tomorrow and the past.
Rooms flower slowly, like stars.
Here are steep steps,
a hexagon of doors,
two china dogs guarding
the gas fire’s slapped cheeks.
I find the Smarties tube of tuppences.
I shake the Virgin so the Holy Water swirls.
I am allowed to sink my face
into the Sunday furs.
In the kitchen,
a clutch of pinnied women
makes the china clink.
Cold meats,
trifle,
salad from a tin.
This is not a photograph –
it’s the warm edge of the past
where the women I love
are still alive.
I thought life would slot
into a snug line
by the sink.
My kitchen is neat and cold.
Light silvers the sill.
At the window, stars.
Catherine Ayres is a teacher from Northumberland. Her debut collection, Amazon was published in 2016 by Indigo Dreams.