After my son was born

I’d a snip cut in his tongue.

Blood scissored down his chin.

At every squall I’d been unsnibbing

myself and starving him. He knocked

me so my nose coughed blood,

punched a finger through my cornea.

Blood blubbed on my nipple

where his gums met. On the radio

somebody was saying something about Syria.

My son jerked knots of hair from my head,

tears dashed off his fontanelle. He’d fixed

my hips so my clothes didn’t fit. I blundered

him once against the doorjamb:

blood. I’d bit his father

when we were younger, drinking harder,

made blood come then. Twice I tried to leave

him screaming, twenty minutes at a time,

but couldn’t keep schtum.

One breakfast I broke the mug that insisted

“Don’t Mess With Texas.”

Smashed it. And all the time

I smiled so much my teeth dried.

He made everything heavy.

Like they say the bomb did for a while,

so that Americans swam

through their homes, eyes peeled,

picking up everyday things and dropping them

as though they were violated with light and pain.

As though blood hadn’t always been there, waiting.