Split: Poems
After Weaning
My tits feel like corpses
or rather
split logs after tree
I’m feeding my body to the fire
to service s’mores
& hang ash
After pulsing with light
and shade
living sap all abuzz
like it or not
Sticky gooey painful
weather
A singular firework of
immense god
Welcome to your new
fizzle
Split
She split my lip
with soft persistent fingers
nails the size of one hundred grains of coarse coral salt
Making me look like I took one on the mouth
or
there is some hard kissing at home
Nope.
It is a pinker shade of violent domesticity
that stings, awkwardly gaping
in the produce isle
straining to not
split back
Gratitude
Parenting is good for me
Tears of joy
well up and close in my throat
like vomit
from an unending wilderness of
ocean of
gratitude
with grand echoes of
Yeah, we know
we’ve seen this before
little buoy
This is a job — if any other — I would
have been fired from
No one gets to give such awful
job performance
again & again and keep the title and rags
But this one
these kids
just keep popping
right the fuck back up
like weeble wobbles
Smiles, needs and all impatient
fears
impossible timing
To claim me
& make me try again
Now
Now
Now