My wife went into the pantry for peaches
but came out with a baby — I hadn’t noticed
the house was pregnant, she said —
it was crying, so I cried back —
then she cried, the woman I barely know
after sixteen years — why just the other day,
she told me she’d always been afraid
#2 pencils might be made
of what they’re named — but even crying
it was cute — pink and scrunchy-eyed —
like a newt balloon someone had blown up
until puffy and ready to pop —
it was as if the universe decided
it was time to act our age — that’s
when we threw all our heroin out —
took the high-wire down and stopped
skeet shooting in the living room —
and as much as I miss yelling Pull
while stoned and standing on the edge
of the air, looking into the abyssal fall
I sorta desperately want, someone’s
gotta change the diapers and burp the thing
when it fills with swamp-gas or whatever
that is — the miracle, you know, of birth
is that my wife and I gave up hang gliding
for making the nummy sound against the belly
of the beast who showed up and took over —
just as once, I shot the rapids, popped out,
squirmed against my mother and destroyed
every other future she might have lived
but one — long before I could speak,
I was cruel — for a few seconds,
I let my mother believe I was everything
she ever wanted — and even now, decades after
my few perfect seconds as a baby, if I called,
at the first unexpected brush of Hey, ma
against her ear, she’d still be hoodwinked
by the tidal pull of my voice
on the ghost of a womb they long ago
ripped out, that she was holding
a full moon in her arms
Dog Head
Benjamin Goldberg
Our mascot was the bulldog. Bulldogs chased me across playgrounds
until I dreamed them. In class, I finished mazes with a green crayon.
Hedges grew skyward from pages, and I ran. My dad once called
this kind of thing my day-head. When my day-head happened,
they called him at his office. I learned the name Daedalus from an article
I read for science class. It meant a plane with leg-powered wings —
carbon tubing, plastic skin. A man with a long name flew a longer way
across the sea from Crete. At recess, I reread the same book
of illustrated myths and cryptids. I dreamed of bulldogs with bulls’ heads.
My day-head was a zoo where gods slept. Daedalus sounded like dad,
so I loved him. Class was an enclosure made of cinder block
and twelve weeks without winter. Behind the glass, my day-head paced.
Daedalus was a zookeeper. I dreamed of a god with a bull’s body
and a hood sewn from my face. The article said I weighed the same
as the Daedalus. I traced flight plans and crash sites on my desk.
My teacher asked us to draw self-portraits. The trees were hydras.
On the paper, I drew an outline of my face. I cut my eyes out
with scissors. They called me to the office, and Daedalus was waiting.
I found a bulldog in a magazine and drew a maze inside each iris.
We played tug-of-war in gym. My day-head was a knotted rope
dangling from steel rafters. I pushed my thumb into the sun. I fell once.
I cut the bulldog from the page, then ripped his head in two.
I glued one half over the left side of my face. I left the right side blank.
The article said the Daedalus crashed twenty-one feet from the black sand
of a beach on Santorini. My day-head was a Kevlar fuselage
belly-down in the sea. They called home. I ran home.
On the right side of my face, I drew a sunny day. I signed my name.
