You Can’t Build a Child

with the medicinal poppies of June

nor with Celan’s bloom-fest of dredged stone,

      not with history’s choo-choo train of corpses,

    not with Nottingham’s Robin Hood

            nor Antwerp’s Diamondland.

Not walking on the Strand in Manhattan Beach with her

      silicone breast implants, refinery, waves of trash,

        not out of the Library of Alexandria

            with her burnt gardens that prefigure gnarly,

        barnacle-laden surfboards broken in half.

You can’t build the child with the stone paths

        that we have walked on through the atmosphere,

            the pirate’s plank, the diving board, the plunge,

          nor with the moon whether

                she be zombie or vampire.

        Not with Delphi, not with fangs, or cardamom bought

                in Fez, red with spring, red with

                    marathon running cheeks.

            Not with monk chant, bomb chant,

        war paint, not with the gigantic Zen pleasure zones,

                nor with this harnessed pig

        on the carousel that I am sitting on with my son

                in Nice, France. How it burns on its axis

            as if it were turning into pineapple-colored kerosene

        the way the Hawaiian pig, apple in snout, roasts

            in its own tropical meat under the countdown sun.