Alvarez Book Page
Christmas in Hampden
A Christmas poem is the latest contribution to the Alvarez Book Page.
You ain’t no virgin, his father said as the boy drove west on Franklin Street his first time behind the wheel You’ve done this before, and he had, one Christmas eve, a few years back his father dead drunk and snoring in the bed upstairs when Midnight Mass let out and their maroon and crème ‘53 Plymouth blocked traffic on Lyndhurst street with its rear end protruding where Pop had tried to park it without the bicycle in the trunk for his daughter because the shop was closed when he finally arrived, half-in-the-bag and rapping at the door before coming home to yell at his family for the injustices of shopkeepers and closing times. Please move the car, boy his mother unhinged from the shouting and crying, asked him and soon the lights of the …
