Northern New England Review Volume 42 | 2022
Northern New England Review is published as a creative voice for the Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine region. NNER publishes writers and artists who live in, are from, or have connections to Vermont, New Hampshire, or Maine. If you live here, were once from here, lost or found your heart here, or are currently searching for it among the green hills, sparkling ponds, and rocky coasts, NNER has the poems, short fiction, and creative nonfiction you want to read. Northern New England Review is edited and designed by students and faculty at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, New Hampshire. Questions can be sent to Margot Douaihy, editor, at douaihym@franklinpierce.edu.
Northern New England Review is published as a creative voice for the Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine region. NNER publishes writers and artists who live in, are from, or have connections to Vermont, New Hampshire, or Maine. If you live here, were once from here, lost or found your heart here, or are currently searching for it among the green hills, sparkling ponds, and rocky coasts, NNER has the poems, short fiction, and creative nonfiction you want to read.
Northern New England Review is edited and designed by students and faculty at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, New Hampshire. Questions can be sent to Margot Douaihy, editor, at douaihym@franklinpierce.edu.
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Matthew Johnson
MY WOOSTER AVE. CHRISTMAS–CIRCA 2003
Christmas mornings in my household
Were spent like a lot of days in the year:
With more God than money.
My parents may have banked that with three little boys,
There was no use in stockpiling fragile games or shiny toys;
All we needed each year were new pants,
Maybe a board game without choking hazards,
And most definitely, a ball of some sort.
It was true,
After the first year where we fought each other for the chocolate
In the Advent Calendar, my parents never bought another one.
I also can’t recollect a single action figure I may have owned;
I like to think we may have once been gifted an off-brand Super Soaker.
With more God than money,
We rarely wasted milk and cookies for some Yuletide sugarplum story.
School-made ornaments of paper-mâché far outnumbered
Silvery bulbs and white Nativity ornaments;
It was fine, we didn’t need them.
I was happy enough without elbow room
And feeling trapped like a family-picture turtleneck in my childhood home.
My frantically, overworked mother would don a face of municipal, holiday joy
While shimmying around the narrow kitchen to sit a pan of some sort,
As my father would be in the backyard watching the flumes of a deep-fried bird
Disperse in the wind-whistling snow.
32 | MATTHEW JOHNSON
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