Two Poems
ba•by
n. 1. Auburn, gold, and blossom cherry: our fingers, two rings and my tongue along your ear. / Electric lighter, gas stove good time/ Praying for lightning. 2. Man made, made man, fire. 3. This woman’s need for family taken away by the Hutu tribe/ This man’s efforts to be her lost village/ Inferno. 4. A bump barring in the words I don’t love you anymore as he kisses her belly for the Christmas card photo. 5. The end of an argument in the emergency room/ What we lost in the flames.
v. 1. To nurse, cure with promises, a cocktail of words, each word mixed in to strengthen the other. / Marry me anyway.
2. To link by umbilical cord./ To cut the cord and hit the thing’s bottom so we hear it breathe. 3. To hear silence instead.
Angel Swan
The last time I gave up my body,
a three-word secret lay on my lap.
Your swan’s beak tore it open
and you lent me your neck.
I proposed.
And we made my dorm room a chapel,
you glowed with our child.
But love taints the angel,
immaculate birds cannot bear flesh and feathers,
and God steals back a dirtied swan.
