Sometimes Christmas                   

The year Christmas was San Francisco
I ornamented my lines with faults;
my body was the garland tinsel curve of Lombard Street
intersected with your mouth.
You gave the Mission;
I bought persimmons
near Geary and Stanyan.
Tamale skins declared luck—
why mess with turkey bones
when you can pull corn husks?

For us it wasn't 12 days of Union Square rejoice,
Advent calendar shop windows and merchandise.
But it was lordly French men, gold ringed,
in the Castro and their little drummer boyfriends
who mistled toes when they had a chance.

We weaved yarn diamonds around once mangoed Popsicle sticks
(homemade Eye-of-God gifts when rent is too much
for high-thread-count cotton sheets and electronics.)
We gave Panhandle(d) music,
drank molinillo frothed Atole in paper cups.
I counted the lines on your immigrant fingers,
you taught me how Catholics shake hands.
Bate, bate, chocolate,
Tu nariz de cacahuate—Peace be with you.

My one room apartment purpled with stringed lights
and Styrofoam elves we hoped wouldn't melt.
We champagne swallowed sacrapantina cake before dinner; called it tradition, even though we'd only done it once, in the more-fog-than-snow-globe-realm of Clement and 25th where salvation is stapled to wood posts
near the Jews for Jesus office—
AIDS Support Group
Love Your Haight Ashbury
Homeless Prenatal Program

We would coffee cup ourselves in the Tenderloin,
at our midnight mass diner
with a gold-toothed street messiah in the next booth
who blessed my freckled tits and your cigarette choice.
We sugared and creamed our orgasm religion;
coffee for wine, coconut pie our communion wafer.
Sometimes you have to taste redemption.
(And oh how we loved our spoon-to-saucer choir)

as we tore napkins into snow clustered bits
near windows that watched.
Sometimes reflections are prophets.

And sometimes we choose sin so we can be forgiven
in cities of masa and fog, where

sometimes Christmas is San Francisco
like us—repurposed, made-up
like stacks of holiday tamales folded into presents—
packaged districts, ribboned with hills.
Labeled with sticky to: and from: labels of street signs

to: Market from: Dolores

menthol-medicated cream             

I don't want to forget your phone call.
How I wiped the menthol-medicated cream
from my chest that night when I was sick;
that I had bronchitis
and tried to hide my sick, cherry breath
with cinnamon fluoride—
that I did it for you.
I don't want to forget
so I'll never have to remember
another time with you.
How I hurried on makeup
hoping my Brown/Black lashes
would make me look thinner somehow.
As if the heights they reached
would stretch my body taller
and slimmer in your eyes that night
because I knew it mattered.
It was all very cinematic—
the blinds drawn, light slivered into the apartment.
My peppermint tea cup,
your leftover napkins on the table
with your life plans drawn out.
My knees hard on the pillow—
the corner tassel and zipper handle
pressed into my skin leaving marks
not as deep as the unkind words
(I wouldn't swallow)
from your Calvin Klein model mouth.
I don't want to think that, somehow,
if I was prettier, more perfect that night,
the only cold would have been December
and not the cold-faucet-water that fell
down my neck as I washed you from my face—
how it ejaculated on a still hot-cool spot on my chest
and cauterized you into the flesh of my senses
as sticky-hot strands of hair stuck to my lips
when I looked up in the mirror.
Now, Decembers later,
I keep that jar of medicated cream,
on a white shelf, in a pink-tiled bathroom,
so I'll never forget what you taste like.