Like That, and: What I Taught Him, and: After Dropping My Son Off at Preschool, and: Dysnomia, and: Anchor

Like That

But the wild things cried, “Oh please don’t go—we’ll eat you up—we love you so!”

…

Sweetie-pie, cupcake, little bean.

I imagine myriad delicacies from Chiang Mai to Lima,       perfect-pea green eggplant

the size of a fingernail, potatoes the improbablepurple of the dye-pot—

…

in the weekly inbox updates you were firstsunflower seed, kidney bean,then

I was tired, the fruit ran together, and after       still tired but do remember

jumbo shrimp—so startled at that one I opened into a squawk

of recognition, last night’s dinner        and the small wavering limbs of my dream,        crisp white carton and a frill of lettuce—

…

The first timeI leaned over and swept the tip of my smallest fingernail down into

the whorl of your ear (bigger than your elbow), and you yelpedin violation:         forgive me

it is no longer my ear        (little boat, little shell I carved)

and still flushing pink, even now, at the embarrassment, the satisfaction—

sliver-moon of yellow wax:        tiny victory.

…

The year the white roses opened. The year of the spaceship, three of usspinning and rolling deep in its hold. Blue stars made of milk and hours.

Weeks in that rhythm. Plant turned toward the sun, its one bud.

Then, stepping out for takeout: both hands free, a twenty in my pocket.

I could open the door—

…

Lovers say, I did not know

where my body ended and yours began.I did not know. Even yesterday when you laughed,

reared back, your head        quick-snap against my upper lip, both of us

laughing and then me still laughing, eye-sting, drop of bloodat the crown of your head, panic—

        oh, mine. This morning

it’s holding, rough/soft, drawing my tongue up under my lip, compelling—        Like that.

And entirely unlike, of course        (of course, we must say, feel we must say)—

…

Six months until you crawled, the only calmlay in your being tied        to me—head up, bumping my ribs,

head up, eyes open, the kicks to the belly—that same position on my body

that you took inside it

(the acupuncture, the headstands: what I wouldn’t do in those last weeksto turn you toward the earth—)

and everything slipping, permeable, all the wavering, you/methe least of it:

        day/night         inside/outside         body/body

what I wouldn’t do        (I could open the door)

wait: wavering Jewish atheist that I am—        I made you.

…

After a day at the beach, I remove your sandal (everythingmoves indirectly around here, someday we’ll get

where we’re going but not just yet): sand, sweat-smell, dirt… your own foot, tasting of more        than sweet new milk, smell

of a body with its own agenda. Pumpkin, honey, sweet-potato-boy.

        I want         I want         I want

And sometimes I get. And sometimes now I lie in bed, hear the doorof the refrigerator open, shut, cereal rustling in the bag.

Little boat. Little boy. Where yours began.

What I Taught Him

in sitting next to the high chair, half-hearing, half hmmm— that partthe part dog-earing a page, cracking

a spine (book arrived in the mail, little life-raft

            in its yellow envelope)

stealing bites of his bagel, half-eyeon the table of contents            a wondrous disease            (or its inoculation)

teaching that compulsion            (& while nursing)            (& on the train)            (&)            (&)

the insistence, the sound (the subway under the avenues, the humof insects even on the meadow even at night, even those nights

            I’d once wokenbecause of the quiet, still then but something off to the leftof the audible spectrum?)— the sound

that is not a sound, the sound that clung to me even once the new person            washed out of me, long after

his body was no longer made from mine, when he was routinely miles away, miles            or hundreds of miles

and in the dark of the meadow...