Pantoum for the New Year

~ Jesse Patrick Ferguson

Regret’s no more than a dropped-pin sound
among the massed voices of the world.
The big ball drops and drops: electric let-down.
Common boys crawl inside bottles or common girls

and together baste in their syrupy desires.
Among the massed voices of the world,
among the legions of auld lang syne, goodwill liars,
common boys crawl inside bottles, and common girls

adjust their skirts to meet the New Year
glistening in their syrupy desires.
Petty insults idle and sulk beneath the cheers
of legions of auld lang syne, goodwill liars.

They grin hard amidst the camera flashes,
the girls adjusting skirts to meet the New Year,
their red eyes bristling with false lashes.
Boys’ paltry come-ons idle beneath the cheers.

They deserve each other, Dick Clark might observe,
grinning, dentured, amidst the camera flashes.
The blank-stare boys are what we deserve
and the red eyes, too, bristling with false lashes.

The crowd acknowledges the corporate sponsors, and
They deserve each other, Dick’s dentures observe,
cued by a producer with the whole world in his hand.
The blank-stare boys and girls only what he deserves.

Regret’s no more than a dropped-pin sound
when the crowd acknowledges the corporate sponsors and
the big ball drops and drops. Electric let-down
staged by the producer with the whole world in his hand.

Jesse Patrick Ferguson‘s work has been published in The New Quarterly, The Walrus, and Poetry, among other journals, and in The Best Canadian Poetry 2009. His first collection is Harmonics (Freehand Books, 2009).

Arc wishes all our readers and contributors safe and happy holidays, and all things champagne and poetry for the New Year.