by Brad Johnson —
After hanging plastic candy canes,
shatterproof Santas and half a dozen
pine-scented sticks from our artificial
Douglas fir; my Jewish daughter turns
the seventh bulb on the electric menorah
in her bedroom window while across
the hall my infant son sleeps beneath
a ceiling of golden stars projected
by his penguin-shaped Dream Lite,
the sound machine filling his room
with ocean waves and their crashing.
Brad Johnson’s first full-length poetry collection The Happiness Theory (Main Street, 2013) is available at http://mainstreetrag.com/bookstore/product-tag/brad-johnson/. His work has been accepted by Hayden’s Ferry, J Journal, Meridian, Poet Lore, Salamander, Southern Indiana Review, Tar River Poetry Review, Willow Springs and others.