While my youngest sister lies <br />on a cold cellar floor <br />in a house whose broken windows hold back nothing <br />and three boys pin down her shoulders <br />and force their way past her belt buckle, I am watching <br />The Christmas Show at Radio City Music Hall, seeing <br />a full moon accentuate the otherworldliness <br />of children dressed as elves, skating snowmen, <br />and cardboard reindeer. <br />While my youngest sister lies on her back, stripped naked, <br />and three boys, one a time, move over her, I am applauding <br />when an entire row of girls <br />wearing bright red bathing suits <br />fleeced with white fur <br />kick open their legs, the whole house applauds <br />at that moment. While my youngest sister looks into the dark <br />wide pupils she will look into <br />for the rest of her life, the boys <br />who prick her throat with a knife <br />feel only a momentary pleasure. <br />and just when I think The Christmas Show is over, <br />the curtain opens once more <br />with sheep, straw, and stars <br />and the story of the nativity begins, <br />of a birth with no sex in it. <br />A real live camel is led across the stage <br />in a caravan with sheiks, children, and beggars <br />waiting to be touched and saved, <br />but at that moment <br />my mother is rushing to open the front door <br />my sister pounds <br />and ponds on, blood on her face, her lips swollen, her cheek swollen, her <br />eyes swollen, having seen enough.<br /><br />Harriet Levin<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-christmas-show/
