Why are people wearing antlers in the hospital cafeteria?
Because it’s Christmas, silly.

Can’t you hear the sleighbells
drifting down like pesticide from all the hidden speakers?

Mr. Johansson says he doesn’t get paid
                                    enough to wear a Santa hat,
but everybody else just goes along with it.

It’s winter, the elevators ding, the stunned relatives get off and on.
If it is Indiana or Ohio, they bring food.

No one sees the drama of the not-dead flowers,
taken from the room of the deceased
and thrown onto the trash.

Was it Stevens, or Corinthians?—“We make our dwelling
on the slope of a volcano.”

You have to admire the ones who stand outside to smoke,
studying the parking lot,
all James-Dean casual with their IV poles.

If you could see them through my eyes, they all have antlers.
Human beings are tough—

with their obesity, their chemo and their scars,
their courage in the face of dark prognosis.

Tough as Rudolf-fucking carcinoma.

Look. Here come the three wise women,
up the escalator, bearing Jell-O.