And now for something you’re really going to like – a Christmas poem by James Patrick Kelly.

Christmas Morning, 2025
by James Patrick Kelly

Folly
Outside a lead sky spits ice and cold rain
Last night I drank too much Burmese champagne
or maybe Beth’s fruitcake gave me ptomaine.
The nog Spock knocked over dried an egg stain.

Holly
Thank Christ the time has come for reindeer to unrein;
one more pa-rum pum pum pum and I’ll go insane.
The old ROM of Grandma has begun to complain
that my two other wives are off sunning in Spain.

Jolly
Beth gives me a freezepack, said to contain
a new pterosaur, still in its membrane.
Dad found the wok for my catfish lo mein.
Jack sends e-Shakespeare, to teach my homebrain.

Finale
Now that it’s over, it’s suddenly plain:
Too much, much too fast makes Christmas a pain.
Next year I’ll relax and try to refrain —
catch a slow dream, be a virgin again.

~

“Christmas Morning, 2025” was first published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, December 1995 and has been published by Underwords with permission from James Patrick Kelly.

James Patrick Kelly has had an eclectic writing career.nbsp; He has written novels, short stories, essays, reviews, poetry, plays and planetarium shows. His fiction has been translated into sixteen languages. In 2007 he won the Nebula Award, given by the Science Fiction Writers of America, for his novella “Burn” and the World Science Fiction Society’s Hugo Award twice: in 1996, for his novelette “Think Like A Dinosaur” and in 2000, for his novelette, “Ten to the Sixteenth to One.” He writes a column on the internet for Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and has two podcasts: Free Reads and James Patrick Kelly’s StoryPod.

He is a member of the faculty of the Stonecoast Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine. He is the Vice Chair of the Clarion Foundation, which oversees the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop at the The University of California at San Diego. He served two terms as a councillor on the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and was Chair of the Council from 2003-2006. He has also served on the New England Foundation for the Arts. www.jimkelly.net