Explore Poems: Parenthood

Another word for father is worry. 
Worry boils the water
for tea in the middle of the night.

Worry trimmed…

But I love the I, steel I-beam
that my father sold. They poured the pig iron
into the mold, and it fed out slowly,
a bending jelly in the bath, and it hardened,
Bessemer, blister, crucible, alloy, and he
marketed it, and bought bourbon, and...

In Francisco Oller’s El Velorio, a child lies
on a table as if sleeping. It is covered in lace

and blossoms…

When the purple snap peas in the garden
couldn’t find anything to grasp onto, the shoots
ferned into…

On my way to the fertility clinic,
         I pass five dead animals.

First a raccoon with all four paws…

We were ravaged             by our loss,                       our child.

                In the shower,                    slightly past midnight,

after I’d covered the …

Between us, there are one hundred one
umber haints in our home.

In bed, we discuss
our future, our children…

Of cool sweet dew and radiance mild
The moon a web of silence weaves
In the still garden where a child…

Frail the white rose and frail are
Her hands that gave
Whose soul is sere and paler
Than time's wan wave…

Hush thee and sleep, little one, 
     The feathers on thy board sway to and fro; 
The shadows reach far downward…

Sad is the man who is asked for a story
and can’t come up with one.

His five-year-old son waits in his lap.
Not the same story, Baba. A new one.
The man rubs his chin, scratches his ear.

In a room full of books...

My daughter says she is the Wolf Singer.
She plants the vertebrae of  her enemies
like seeds. She’s three.

I understand.
I too wear my antlers most of the time
now. It only hurts the first

hundred years. Sometimes she says:
I was here
before, I looked in...

in the waiting room, I watched women snap
rubber bands around their wrists, running

their hands through…

the sac
itself wasclear      
        and I cleaned itlike a window
and in the windowsaw my baby
our baby[birdlike  
mouth opennasalarea still    
oversizedlike a beak]eye’s aperture blue-black    
head thrownbackand twisted beginning  
to separateneck brok
en in the contractions’violencetwo arms
two legstailbone translucent... [whatcolor is
the baby?]silent heart [sac contains“chorionic cavity”]
with utmost tendernessI...

You will tell your babies, someday,
of the little house behind the wall clock.

They will love most the part about the window
sloped inside a six’s hollow, silhouettes

of Sundays, shadows having dinner.
How they walk along the edges of  hands

at night, skipping pebbles...

It should be easy, I tell my son,
to dispose of the possessions kept
in these rooms.

I’ve left some things on a shelf for him, see?
These coupons might still be valid,
the vinegar will keep forever.

I’ve always liked the idea of order.
I’ve always...

In this life, there are stars
and there are stunt doubles.

Before I became one of those fathers
obsessed with memorizing his lines,
making peace with the Big Director
in the sky who doesn’t like ad libs,
before all that, I was the star
of my own...

I crossed the border into the Republic of Motherhood
and found it a queendom, a wild queendom.
I handed over my clothes and took its uniform,
its dressing gown and undergarments, a cardigan
soft as a creature, smelling of birth and milk,
and I lay...

I did not deserve to be beaten,
and I did not deserve ballet lessons––
except insofar as everyone deserves ballet lessons.
Me mum thought I was well worth beating.
She would not have thought that I deserved to starve.
I deserved the milk in her...

My daughter’s cellphone works
           only on the veranda. A metronome

pulses the hours. Boats comb the lake. The Alps
           multiply, the nurse calls to say

she’s on her way, or something upbeat.
     ...