Plastic Santa

It’s January and plastic Santa
still plays his golden sax
outside a store on Jinhuapu Lu.
His mechanized twiggy legs
are barely hid
as they twitch in tandem
in his thin flannel pants—
Christmas red, of course,
and his lips as brown as tofu
hang a full two inches behind
the sax’s cracked reed.
Poor man! Even the dogs—
Pekingese, Chihuahuas and others—
step around him as they snuffle
for a swatch of sun to jazz their bones
on this cold day.