After judging each wreath
hung on every door on Beacon Hill
on a scale of one to five stars,
we sit facing each other Christmas evening
in the bedroom in your Aunt Striddie’s
Empire chairs. Streetlights illumine
I use the base of both of my palms
to press against the bottom of the bulb.
The garlic opens into cloves that splay
across the grain of the cutting board.
Wally Swist was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1953. His poems have appeared in such publications as Alaska Quarterly Review, The Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry, Appalachia, Connecticut Review, New England Watershed Magazine, Osiris, Puckerbrush Review, Rosebud, Sanctuary: The Massachusetts Audubon Magazine, Stories from Where We Live: The North Atlantic Coast (Milkweed Editions), Stories from Where We Live: The Eastern Woodlands (Milkweed Editions), and Yankee.