from
x y z & &
whirling
their skirts about until they stand
out
flat— they play at mass & house & scourge
('not
a safe game') & knucklebones
& rock
paper
scissors they play at trucks & farm.
when
the three children play Harry Potter
the
girl gets to be Harry that's
brother-love.
hexenmilch (milch pleez she says) this body.
they
play at school they play at basehit they
play
wug test. two months weaned she still
turns her
body
as if to nurse when sleepy she
still
jams her hand down my shirt because
nursing
wasn't
physically intimate enough
she'd hook a finger in my ear &
pull
my face down to hers girl can be a verb
the
blue of larkspur the blur of larkspur
like
wet wool like a rain soaked wool kilt drying
slowly
over the course of the day by
occupying
desks near warm radiators
until
sixth or seventh period
(trigonometry? bio two?)
a kind
of
animal smell the damp hair
sticks
to the back of her neck the fever
breaks
& makes this snow smell like this smell not
unpleasant
but not conventionally
pleasant
like puppy breath it must have
an
evolutionary purpose
like
I love your morning breath I'll take
care
of you forever hold her unutterable
I
believe in neither superman nor
virgin
birth but I believe in you, Elżbieta
Jabłońska. & though I spent over
four
of the last six years nursing someone,
there
are no photos of me doing so
except this one awkward selfie when
she
was around eighteen months old &
in it
she's got the corner of her eye on
the iphone.
maybe
in some weird corner I do believe
in
the virgin birth the way an older
kid
believes in santa just to be safe.
alas,
I could never be a good
Quaker. self-immolation is a big
girl word but everyone's
wearing it.
XXVIII.
1 - 2. William Carlos Williams, "Children's Games" from Pictures from Brueghel.
XXIX.
1. T.S. Eliot, "Ash-Wednesday."
14.
Rachel Blau DuPlessis, "Draft 2: SHE."
XXX.
13 - 14. Laura Spagnoli, "Letters to My Niece," My Dazzledent Days.
the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
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