An Account of SAFTA’s Crafting for the Holidays Workshop in Verse
‘Twas eighteen days ’til Christmas and nineteen ’til Kwanzaa
(Alas, ’twas two days too late for Hanukkah)
When Wendy appeared with a magical box
Full of gold chains, old pinups, and sparkly rocks.
She taught us how to cut out photos we love
To glue them in doodads I don’t know the name of.
Then, we added some chains with pliers and snippers,
And she mixed a potion, clear as fairy tale slippers.
We poured the goo into the thingamajigs
And popped all the bubbles with our handy toothpicks.
She told us to make sure they didn’t come back,
But by that point, I’d opened a bottle of Jack,
So I sort of forgot my necklace for a spell.
Some others were living the High Life, as well.
(If you call us lushes for our “holiday spirits,”
Well, we weren’t on the roads, so I don’t want to hear it.)
After we laid out our jewelry to dry,
I talked about decoupage and how to apply
Paper to beer bottles without it wrinkling,
And as we painted and glued, I saw Erin’s eyes twinkling
Because she had decoupaged poems in a swirl,
And sitting on top, a centerfold girl.
Kristi covered her bottle with recipes.
Mary Ellen decked hers out with a campfire and posies.
Wendy’s orange vase was one of the best.
Lyric’s was totally covered in breasts.
I suppose we know who’s nice and who’s naughty:
We’re all both. After all, we are literati.
After that, Lyric tried to teach us to knit.
She’s a patient teacher, but we just didn’t get it.
Somehow, the yarn wound ’round both my needles
Until they got stuck. Purls are riddles.
A few hours later, I’d made only a square,
But later that night when no one was there,
And I couldn’t sleep, I almost finished a scarf!
(What the hell rhymes with scarf? Dwarf? Barf?)
When I arose the next morning, Erin and Wend
Came by to bring the workshop to an end.
To our delight, we found, in return for our troubles,
Brand new pendants–with only a couple of bubbles.
Then, outside the window, a man tied a tree
To his pickup and drove off–oh, Tennessee!–
As his daredevil friend surfed the tree down the street,
Exclaiming something I won’t repeat.
