My thanks to poet Annie Muir for this seasonal poem from her pamphlet New Year’s Eve. Best wishes for your own New Year’s Eve – wherever you are. See you in 2023.

Enxaneta

In Barcelona it is 38 degrees
and a little girl screams with mimicked joy –

she is all eyelashes, all eyes,
all teeth and gums and tongue.

I hate her through the eyes of her big sister:
half a plastic broken heart tied around my neck,

I climb a fence to watch the castellers.
They huddle, arms up as if reaching for a throat,

others climb them like stairs, feet clinging to backs
like tadpoles on their first legs,

it doesn’t stop, more like ants than people
but with muscle and bone and white trousers,

two little girls heading for top,
one takes her place below, the other

is no longer a child but the star
at the top of a Christmas tree,

her arm pointing up is the man on the moon,
a clock striking midnight on New Year’s Eve.

She slides down the legs of her supporters,
relieving the mountains of tension from their shoulders.

Biography

Annie Muir lives in Glasgow. Her debut pamphlet New Year’s Eve was published by Broken Sleep Books. Pre-pandemic she handed out poems on the street outside local libraries, and has a podcast – Time for one Poem – aimed at complete beginners to poetry.
@time41poem