by Martin
Ott
I am the only one alone with my rubber
doll weighted with beebees, my lifeless
baby with lips parted so I can stick
a finger down her throat to scoop out
imaginary food matter and regurgitation.
My wife is home sick in bed and I copiously
take notes. There are many ways to kill
a baby, I find, but just one way to give life.
I learned this from my father or mother,
the Sunday comics or the pink flamingos
on the lawn, the first zeppelin to go down
in flames or Julie Zelinski's bra in the back
row of the State Theater. She knew better
than I the consequences of such storytelling.
I am the only one alone with my life-size
baby surrogate - around me are couples,
grandparents, whole families taking turns
huffing and blowing hard into balloon lungs,
pressing fingers below the sternum to start
the heart. All I can think about are lips:
how many of them have kissed my baby
doll and if this makes me a terrible father.
I am told when to hold my infant upside down,
and what poisons to treat with charcoal,
and the thin cap that covers their heads
when they've been wrested from their first
long, wet dream. I am the only one alone
with my baby ­ I bounce her nervously
on my knee. There are so many ways
to fail and too many adults still crawling
through life on scraped knees, with night sweats
and tantrums and lights on above their beds.
Hands are raised around the room, questions
Asked, the eyes of mothers resting on me.
But all I can think about is what my daughter
will see first ­ my hands reaching out to catch her
or the shadows they'll throw on her as she cries
from the cold, already a traveler into the light.
First published in The Greensboro Review