blares when I hit the car radio’s button,
catapults me back to Brooklyn 1970
when I made cards from those of previous years,
decorated with rickrack and spangles
That year, I baked cookies, stuffed mushrooms,
made two cheesecakes, garnered fame
in the Mazza clan. Thirty guests for Christmas Eve.
Buffet with dishes and real silverware, crystal
punchbowl in the living room. My mother
loaned me a second set of china. I created
ornaments, each satin ball pinned with ribbons
and beads— gifts. A dozen for my sister.
Grandmother asked. You make-a de spumoni?
For a moment, I can smell cigarettes, beer,
hear canned laughter from the den’s TV,
men arguing about gun control,
but I’m driving east to the Vet in Ashland,
with my dog and one cat. Annual shots
and a stop for twenty pounds of flour,
dates, nuts, caraway seeds on the way home,
where I don’t put up a tree or string lights. No
gifts to buy. I’ll bake and bake to give
nearly all of it away, happy a snowy winter’s
in the forecast, ready to hibernate with pets
and novels and fabrics, enough notebooks
for another thirty years.
INSTANT NOODLES 