ISSUE: Spring 1985
Plumped with 10 P. M. feeding
she’s poked in by her
mother-in-sweater-and-Keds.
He’s at his reading,
his desk the one ember
left burning in his domestic shade.
On the closet door one
vestigial hardrock poster
vibrates still;
his cigarette smokes on;
his drink waits
on its makeshift coaster.
He sets her on his palm.
She fills the adroit dish
woven of stabled muscles,
(Was it for this he strangled hobo wishes?)
supports the rotating neck
and graceless diaper;
eyes the mysterious bluff
of her pristine stare,
tickles, cooly, the shapeless cheek,
the gaping lip, and bare feet
(angled red nymphal imperatives).
Her milky eyes narrow with mirth.
A miniature laugh.
springs from the original book of laughs;
she shakes; her eyes water;
red digits rise and fall with laughter.
Then, stiffening her pink girth,
she gives him a straight look.
