Author's Note  "Self-Portrait in a New Year's Ball" was written on New Year's Day, as has become my habit. It's an attempt to see what's happening in my mind, let connections make themselves, end up in a place I couldn't have forseen at the first line - much like a year in one's life. When I was a kid I remember my mom won a prize - a trip to Germany! - by guessing the approximate number of jelly beans in a Volkswagen Beetle. My first book, Unburial, was published in 2019 by Kelsay Books. I can be found at marcalandimartino.com/

Self-Portait in a New Year’s Ball

It all comes down to this: What do you want 
	    from life? Fame, fortune, prestige? A new house,
			two cars parked in the garage? A wife
 
who gives fantastic blowjobs? A winning
            sports team to root for? A sassy hairdo, a 
                        pinstripe zoot-suit with gold pocket watch
 
to boot? Study the latest reports, they all say
            the same thing: the future is a monastery
                        full of polished skulls arranged in pyramids
 
tourists ogle. Go ahead, take a selfie with yourself
            at forty, fifty, sixty-three—see what the decades do
                        to your face, see how they return your smile
 
in an empty envelope marked, “WE CARE.” 
            See how austere Venetian palaces topple
                        like sandcastles at the slightest lick of a wave
 
how the cosmos flicks the marble-sized
            planets around and around this lazy star
                        you call home. The latest reports lay it all out
 
in punctilious detail: the future is a snakeskin
            lacking the snake. It’s a Happy Meal hidden
                        in a haunted house. It’s a Volkswagen Beetle
 
full of jelly beans. Can you even approximate
            their number? There is no prize if you do,
                        none if you don’t. All there is is the is.

                        

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