A well-stocked pantry

My wife went into the pantry for peaches

but came out with a baby — I hadn’t noticed

the house was pregnant, she said — 

it was crying, so I cried back — 

then she cried, the woman I barely know

after sixteen years — why just the other day,

she told me she’d always been afraid

#2 pencils might be made

of what they’re named — but even crying

it was cute — pink and scrunchy-eyed — 

like a newt balloon someone had blown up

until puffy and ready to pop — 

it was as if the universe decided

it was time to act our age — that’s

when we threw all our heroin out — 

took the high-wire down and stopped

skeet shooting in the living room — 

and as much as I miss yelling Pull

while stoned and standing on the edge

of the air, looking into the abyssal fall

I sorta desperately want, someone’s

gotta change the diapers and burp the thing

when it fills with swamp-gas or whatever

that is — the miracle, you know, of birth

is that my wife and I gave up hang gliding

for making the nummy sound against the belly

of the beast who showed up and took over — 

just as once, I shot the rapids, popped out,

squirmed against my mother and destroyed

every other future she might have lived

but one — long before I could speak,

I was cruel — for a few seconds,

I let my mother believe I was everything

she ever wanted — and even now, decades after

my few perfect seconds as a baby, if I called,

at the first unexpected brush of Hey, ma

against her ear, she’d still be hoodwinked

by the tidal pull of my voice

on the ghost of a womb they long ago

ripped out, that she was holding

a full moon in her arms