I found it on my way to work this afternoon
Perched on the lip of my doorstep
In a thick brown envelope like the
Abandoned bassinet you always
See placed in front of an orphanage
Christmas morning in movies where
The young superhero reared by nuns
Learns through a series of jump cuts and stilted
Black and white flash backs the elusive
Origins of his past and how I smiled
At first when I saw your name
Picking the package up with two hands
And just holding it for a minute
Remembering how our bodies fit together
How I could hear, audibly hear
The syllable of your every thought
Swelling in your pulse
Your petite neck on my chest
As I held you early that morning
Before you left as I held
The postaged preemie
In my arms before
Opening it as if I were
Trying to unhook
A brassiere for the first time
Excited and curious as to what would
Release itself into my palms
Yet nervous and even a little scared
Watching with awed vision
As the contents availed themselves
An autographed (!!!) novel by Sherman Alexie
(Whose short-story “The Toughest Indian in the World
Is one of my all-time favorites.”)
The mixed CD the first half I’ve
Already listened to during my break
Here at work today,
A copy of Harold and Maude
Your favorite movie which I have never seen
And a letter
—Two letters composed in pencil
Nobody including myself writes
Beautiful letters and sends them via
Mail anymore without logging in a
User name and dotted password first
Unfolding the twin sheaths
Still fresh with the DNA of your
Fingertips and breath
Alphabetical paper ships
Of your words floating across
The white pond of the page
Where you wrote me about your religious periphery
Language kneeling at the altar behind your voice
Where you wrote me about
Yearning and about fear
And about leaving and near the end of the second
Letter you told me to drop you a line if I wanted to have babies
The quote I have never before heard
Embraced in a gray-ripple of penciled
Dashes buoyed with an exclamatory stalk
Walt Whitman’s name standing
On the banks of the quotation
As if the overweight bearded poet himself
Toasted the pear shaped orb up to the sun like a film negative
One morning after bathing
Naked in the Hudson
And found a fetus
Pitted within the center of the fruit
Like a dead Christmas tree ornament
The color of the wood in my apartment since you left
The embryo spending the last trimester
Outgrowing the mother
A seed so lonely for the taste of what once was
Surrounded by a moist placenta of mushy
Wonder wet with joy.
Perched on the lip of my doorstep
In a thick brown envelope like the
Abandoned bassinet you always
See placed in front of an orphanage
Christmas morning in movies where
The young superhero reared by nuns
Learns through a series of jump cuts and stilted
Black and white flash backs the elusive
Origins of his past and how I smiled
At first when I saw your name
Picking the package up with two hands
And just holding it for a minute
Remembering how our bodies fit together
How I could hear, audibly hear
The syllable of your every thought
Swelling in your pulse
Your petite neck on my chest
As I held you early that morning
Before you left as I held
The postaged preemie
In my arms before
Opening it as if I were
Trying to unhook
A brassiere for the first time
Excited and curious as to what would
Release itself into my palms
Yet nervous and even a little scared
Watching with awed vision
As the contents availed themselves
An autographed (!!!) novel by Sherman Alexie
(Whose short-story “The Toughest Indian in the World
Is one of my all-time favorites.”)
The mixed CD the first half I’ve
Already listened to during my break
Here at work today,
A copy of Harold and Maude
Your favorite movie which I have never seen
And a letter
—Two letters composed in pencil
Nobody including myself writes
Beautiful letters and sends them via
Mail anymore without logging in a
User name and dotted password first
Unfolding the twin sheaths
Still fresh with the DNA of your
Fingertips and breath
Alphabetical paper ships
Of your words floating across
The white pond of the page
Where you wrote me about your religious periphery
Language kneeling at the altar behind your voice
Where you wrote me about
Yearning and about fear
And about leaving and near the end of the second
Letter you told me to drop you a line if I wanted to have babies
The quote I have never before heard
Embraced in a gray-ripple of penciled
Dashes buoyed with an exclamatory stalk
Walt Whitman’s name standing
On the banks of the quotation
As if the overweight bearded poet himself
Toasted the pear shaped orb up to the sun like a film negative
One morning after bathing
Naked in the Hudson
And found a fetus
Pitted within the center of the fruit
Like a dead Christmas tree ornament
The color of the wood in my apartment since you left
The embryo spending the last trimester
Outgrowing the mother
A seed so lonely for the taste of what once was
Surrounded by a moist placenta of mushy
Wonder wet with joy.
