Dinner tonight: baked Harmony-raised ham, braised homemade sauerkraut, parslied potatoes, salad greens with roasted carrots, tiny oatmeal rolls, panna cotta with raspberry and sherry sauce and topped with cashew praline.

Christmas at the Ramada

Dawn Potter

3. The Bed

It lurks round every Ramada corner,

this bed, single-minded as Sparta.

Once the door chunks shut behind them,

once they inspect all the drawers and snigger

at the Oriental-ish art screwed

to the beige wallpaper, once they suck down

a quick roach at the icy casement,

time runs out for everything but the bed

and K and O—the gravitational pull

of this motel mattress, Charlemagne-

sized, its flowered coverlet severe;

a bed royally firm yet dim as a cave

in the shadow of the light fixtures.

Sex is the heart of the matter:

and perhaps, thinks O,

there is something vital in ugliness,

this reduction to famine,

we two thrown together like phantom

Barbarellas, and all the while the ice machine

crashes in the hall, handyman snowmen

whirr and clack, the fat guys in the lounge

switch to Friars hockey and whiskey sours,

and a tow truck finally drags a smashed-up

Chevy from the parking lot.

In the distance, a siren.

K leans back against the somber headboard,

silken and shy, open-eyed.

What magic to be awaited by a man

whose every rib she must have kissed

at least once in the half-life

they’ve dreamed away.

Though this bed demands a new,

a starker obeisance—

This stripped-down polyester

battlement, this outcast star—

No shepherd awake to guard his ewe lamb.

4. The TV

It’s been Christmas at the Vatican

for hours already; but midnight mass

flickers into their ten p.m. motel room

like an accident. What’s more,

the announcer is busily translating

every Latin phrase into rich

and obfuscating Spanish.

The pope looks terrible.

Under his golden robes and mitre,

he sags to one side like a cat

stuffed into fancy pajamas.

The camera can hardly bear to film him;

it keeps switching to a chanting

Salvadoran priest, dark and beautiful,

voice a thin angelic tenor,

though he is horribly nervous,

his shadowy chin trembling

between each honeyed line.

At home in San Salvador, his mother

is prostrate with fear of God,

O thinks, pressing her cheek into K’s

bare arm. Now the camera shifts

to pan a row of old ladies draped in black

furry coats and orange lipstick;

they glare, outraged;

they look exactly like the old ladies

who instigate fender benders

on Elmwood Avenue, carelessly shooting

homeward after a day spent

plotting dominion; yet thank Heaven,

they’re also the sentimental type

who adore enchanting priests.

How good of the holy church

to meet their needs with such pity

and take the heat off this poor pope

slumping unfilmed beneath his foreign

vault, his cold sky, a few brisk lights

scattered across the black. Not far off,

the faithful sleep, safe as milk.