What We Want for Our Kids

For George A. Romero in ‘78

In this life-deserted mall, alone even with child,
the men have gone out to kill for the day.
We figured out that blunt trauma to the head works best,
bullet or baseball bat, simply a difference in exertion.

There’s booze in this room, and my shotgun,
but no governing authority to inform me that
both are hazardous to my rounding stomach.

I wait for the men, and hope they
aren’t scratched or bitten,
dragging their feet and forgetting my face.

They’ve offered to kill it too, but I’m still on the fence.

I wonder now whether I’d want the kid
in a world that was still alive,
without the growing horde of walking dead, and should that even matter.

I fear my child will grow to resent the world we provided,
or that it will emerge with lifeless eyes
and a taste for flesh.

Some mornings, as I vomit, and the men are hunting,
I see a survivor, her hair wild and fierce in a new city,
growing in myth, returning the dead to their graves,
a hero of songs, a terrible beauty.

Mother at Cana

For Kim, before the baby; and for Teddy, after.

Start with fingers,
tapping nonsense in patient time
on a swollen stomach,
stretched to blossom and burst.

Move to palms,
carrying their prize
a wine flask that might drop
before the celebration begins,
a gift for those who wait outside,
in anticipation of its sweetness.

Drop your gaze to legs,
cracking with expansion,
preparing for the last steps
of a journey,
miles all earned
in the pains of carrying
children like crosses.

Look at the face,
eyes closed and content,
even in this fracturing,
inevitable departure.

Look at this woman,
remember her face, limbs,
before it began,
before she held an imperfect mirror
to her breast,

before she gave you this gift.

Passion is the word for suffering,
for sacrifice, love.
Amazing and beautiful
that meanings exist, creation,
the demanded burden of giving life,
the start of the story,

the first miracle.