White Christmas Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The ghost unobserved in a sea
Of cacophonous Latinos,

I saw white Christmas
For the last time
At the exhibit of Anglos
Behind the glass
In the museum of New Mexico

The stuffed family of luxury
Grazing about the winking bows,
The brightest of metals remembered,
Dipping branches in the sad dissonance,
Deaf ears on mannequins can never explain
The new waves of blue-collar wonderment
Flooding in from the scorpion-dessert,
Ushering in the sadly wonderful change
Of social evolutionism
Which has forever mutated the color and appetite
Of America’s skin.

The plastic children were very polite,
Holding half eaten bits of holiday cake
In their cherubic, polished fingers,
Shaded in the spindles of holy light
Their eyes glutting on the feast of presents,
They never seem to ask where their souls
Are hidden

The father and mother smiling rather slightly,
Resting tiny porcelain tea saucers in their laps,
The last unbroken bit of their empire,
Now like frozen polar bears in naked rhapsody
For the voyeuristic eyes on the new waves of
Modern conquistadors

I, their impotent cousin, look on like
Some sort of ghostly dessert slowly melting
Away and evaporated by the heat of the emerging
Bodies, spiced by chili and the scent of
Strange tobaccos hissed between their silver-shingled teeth.

Hispanic mothers, corpulent and fertile,
Their smooth bowled skin followed by a health train
Of offspring speak inspirational epitaphs to the dead.
“Bonitas blancas, ” they whisper religiously and the smallest of their
Young cry. “Pero ahora totales son muertos.”

But their drunken husbands, walking at the tail end,
As if trying to stabilize on an inebriated ship, say the truth of their feelings.
“Gringos putas. No mas Patrones ahora. No mas Vatos.
Ahora total son dinosaurios.”
And all the men in agreement, they zip down
Their pants and try to piss on the exhibit, but the
Glass splashes the fiery urine back onto the faces of their
Smallest children, making their women curse them.

They wear the true religion now, in small
Busy streets cluttered with smells of meat cooking,
With men playing dice in dirty intersections,
And the unabashed love fornicating wherever there
Is light and space to do so

Bullfighting and drag racing are the new
National sports played in the stadiums of great
Red corrals, were battalions of dust devils spin whenever
God breathes in the expansive sprawl of poor cities
Those splay out like the veined flesh of sweet fruit
Across the great desert beds which are no longer empty

Here where there is no longer reasons for one to
Take position above the other, where God is readily
Available to any man and can be seen lighted by sacred
Candles nearby bowls of sacrament for strangers to feed upon
As they look into the smooth glass face of the Holy Virgin

Here, where the new language sings upwards through
Bustling streets, the strangest cities and byways built by
The absent landlords whose providences now lay scattered far a field.
The white man, who has transgressed his religions,
Aborted the wishes of his destiny,
Spilled semen into condoms and
Slaughtered the hopes of children upon the spasms of contraceptive
Fields,
So that the red man rose plentiful from the earth
Once more in crops of excellent corn,
Plentiful and multitudinous on the great planes stretched between seas.

And pyramids began to arise again,
And there were human sacrifices,
But not many and they were quick and bloody
Shows out in the open
Displayed without excuses so blood
Stained the saltlick for cows
And people lost their heads once again
But this time for the glory of god,
And not to fill their gas tanks.

Impotent and vaporous,
I was hollowed, one of the last of
The pale men, a blunderbust
Staring there in the peppered throngs
At my ancestors like new-age Neanderthals
In their airless tomb, waiting for one
Of their eyes to raise to me and pull the
Heavy weight of my soul off my shoulders

When one of the smallest children
Came up and tried to press her little hand
Into mine. Her father came, swaying up
Drunkenly from behind,
And I thought he would curse me.
Instead, he only took her hand in his
And, as he turned away with her,
Said to me, “Adios.”