38 Baby poems

The birth isn’t about poetry It is about screaming pain on a Sunday Hailing a cab and head racing To the hospital, now so close to the new apartment I had a baby inside of me But no one expected it to happen so fast Or then at least they said they didn’t Maybe they expected it to happen so fast All along Alone in the waiting room I shook and shook And the blood ran down my legs Later with the magnesium I thought of the many permutations of the bald head Pale, pickling fish skin, glowing with scales When she came out, she was dark and full of hair No blood, but born in the caul Like the other magical realities of my past accomplishments When she came out she cried and it sounded like me But passed me, into her new reality Now 3 weeks later, they say I am still not an erotic object So I wander the park in the snow with my friend We light candles and pray to the darkness We light the park on fire and the police come and find us When they take us to the jail, I say no, it’s not right I am a mother after all They say, but where is your baby And I say, no no, my baby my baby They say, yes yes, look at your beautiful baby I say, I do, I do Look, look, and listen My baby my baby She’s here

The pure amnesia of her face, newborn. I looked so far into her that, for a while, the visual held no memory. Little by little, I returned to myself, waking to nurse those first nights in that familiar room where all the objects had been altered imperceptibly: the gardenia blooming in the dark in the scarred water glass, near the phone my handwriting illegible, the patterned lamp- shade angled downward and away from the long mirror where I stood and looked at the woman holding her child. Her face kept dissolving into expressions resembling my own, but the child’s was pure figurative, resembling no one. We floated together in the space a lullaby makes, head to head, half-sleeping.Save it, my mother would say, meaning just the opposite. She didn’t want to hear my evidence against her terrible optimism for me. And though, despite her, I can redeem, in a pawnshop sense, almost any bad moment from my childhood, I see now what she must have intended for me. I felt it for her, watching her as she slept, watching her suck as she dreamed of sucking, lightheaded with thirst as my blood flowed suddenly into tissue that changed it to milk. No matter that we were alone, there’s a texture that moves between me and whatever might have injured us then. Like the curtain’s sheer opacity, it remains drawn over what view we have of dawn here in this onetime desert, now green and replenished, its perfect climate unthreatened in memory— though outside, as usual, the wind blew, the bough bent, under the eaves, the hummingbird touched once the bloodcolored hourglass, the feeder, then was gone.

Ecstatic experiences with nature This is an automatic furnace Do not drop or roll Do not handle with squeeze lift truck Handle with care This is a piece of quality assured Home heating and cooling equipment The Ohio Valley Container Corporation Made its container to stand A resistance bursting test Of over 200 pounds per square inch Not an inch a metaphor, These words are on my window There is no pane, the first frost comes The second baby, we'll have to Turn up the heat, eat nothing And breathe through a rose Emulating the butterfly's patterns And the repetitive indifference of leaves Turning pink, color of the rose, so flushed Orange color, color of trees Ecstatic mists train us, no feeling No feeling, only moving beginning The pane crashed, baby falls Between loose pelvis onto the sheet Watches leaves blow wind onto window Ecstatic poets bend over, watch the thin doctor He's in the light, this is a chore or task Leaves blow the rose upside down up and down the street Interior blowing toward muscles and thighs Bending up and down, pictures of people The butterfly replaces the hat Every inch of the sheet is ironed Practice matches a new sculpture of thought in ephemeral stretching The space is no bigger than needed Air and water all around, pennies in water I foresee a taste for display in blowing up and down The crown describes only fantastic gems in air No loose signs of what the teas will do for you Fear a moment of taking longer than the warmth lasts The visitors and the coaches then speak of their intention For time to deny any atrophy or waste, even the giggles Later longer than warmth not in inches But in wrappings of leaves for warmth and evenness The warm colors, the cold blue curtains between the sun and the moon After pretension to be singly devoted to one's task is swayed to love Then the simple movement from inside to outside Become astonishment, red yellow orange and eyes bright Sophia Crystal foretells as I foresee absence of memory who sings eternally Only to sing more and more

DANCE little baby, dance up high, Never mind baby, mother is by ; Crow and caper, caper and crow, There little baby, there you go ; Up to the ceiling, down to the ground, Backwards and forwards, round and round ; Dance little baby, and mother shall sing, With the merry coral, ding, ding, ding.

New life! Will he toe out like Dolly, like John? Will her eyes be fires? Blue and green, like Papa's, the ocean at the shore? Will she sing in the bath? Play piano in her diapers? Will her heart leap at large machinery? Will he say, "Dribe dribe," to his daddy, entering the tunnel? Will his hair be red? Will her hair curl? Will her little face have the circumflex eyebrows of her mother? The pointed chin? Her hair be fair, bright blonde? Will she frown at the light by the river? Oh, let her head fill with Greek Owls, her mouth with honey wine. Let his hands cup the keys, the air of the studio filling with sound, the crunch of cornflakes, the sift of raw sugar on the tongue, the great chords. And let the parents be fierce forever, Lord, as You are, exacting price and penalty for Your gifts, so they grow strong and joyous, blessed by the memory of the black car, open to air, chosen by a child in token of the power they give over, their lives in service to new life, the great melt of petals under snow, the green rising.

I knew she was my last baby while she was still a baby something in the holding was more deliberate more memorizing i tried to hold the weight of her in my arms and in my memory at the same time

Her first word was the dog's name not mama not dada the dog i can't even be mad the dog is great

3am in the chair the small heavy weight of her on my chest her breathing slows i should be sleeping this is what i'm doing instead and i don't mind