I.

The Point that Baby Breaks,

Baby’s first words were live my life: you wanted to eat

on the meat side of the table and live under the tomato plants

Conservation demanded our integrity while we:

boorish and unkempt, straddled work and charity

Our best intentions crook under our worst faces

our summer parties reek of cheap shots at the winter’s air.

Her motivation: little Baby wishes her pen pal out of

Anbar; writes with determined knuckles swelled at the thought

of war, and when will mom stop serving those animals finger foods:

concessions to women who clean faces with hand soap containing the smallest

hint of human blood, hint of what’s to come, dirty rumors washed with

discussions of me, for once: I, as entity living in a confined space - I, as

host to problems of increased governmental leaning – How we can afford

a language school? Is it important for Baby to learn French?

to grow with grace and still manage meat from the bone – finding substantive ways to say

Dieu n'est pas dans les details. Les détails sont dans Dieu

And does baby mix up? Does baby lack proper translation for the job? The orders? What forks stab at What concerns us is Baby has been saying nobody puts her in a corner:

she has found American video and sweaty men – she has danced with American buffets full of choices: the fish looks palatable: the desert looks unsalvageable- what now?

II

sees Ghosts,

Where Toledo was made saccharine by song; wishing wells,

good to see you’s, let’s get togethers for a small portrait,

ghosts that live in fall-out shelters on the shores of lake Lake Pontchartrain

Danny got his drunk-on up in Montreal with fighters: glass-jawed beasts,

targets of the census – we moved westward, our eyes sewed shut like test tube

babies who will learn how to dance one; snuck looks at the Tetons: cosmic laugh

angles cut by parallel weekends: back and forth from rise to run – baby who will

learn how to die, haunt us with summer stock, dinner theater, WASPy nests of clay

-amber preserving the memory of her father in a room that breathed underwater

fishing poles, fishing nets, bottled ships, World’s Greatest Dad plague(s) under

the teeth of old men: fedora armies, minds set on children who would find a way

home to stoops of Brooklyn, hand in hand for Christmas dinner: amber encased rooms,

shrines to ghosts that live in kitchens, that don’t want to go to bed; please, please

one more hour

III

road side bomb houses,

Yet they are an angry pride of eagles, well-wishing the sky away with thoughts

of home - and Baby who has taken a new lover: the suited, successful type.

Her net of rhetorical stickery: Blue: the populace as welcome host/holy host; country with greeting banners of gun muzzles and hemlock for afternoon coffee eager think-tanks

We always thought you bigger – thought you able to pick out grains from the dunes.

Instead we're sold foaming history that skips hearts with shape-charged chest caves:

see-through pupils weaned on the beckoning paradise of repressed sex concerns,

static electric screens that crack and snap at ingrained sword and sandal faith

Patrick Swayze admires a desert sunset through the crosshairs Discovery’s newest weapons import - says original programming used to be about the dialogue of war:

the decent things men say to preserve an empire – now left to large scale bar room brawls where anyone hits anyone and the Rotary Club savages the prisoners for road side clean up rights

For customs: you tip the tender that serves you poison, you watch for signs of over saturation, you talk strong men out of overplaying their hand – discourage back room sleaze fucking

Frances Houseman will wait for you in the Catskills – she is having the time of her life.

She takes traditional Jewish levelers to bed under a blanket of mountain air – she dreams

of unknown war – of “gloves on” duel custom – of presidents unafraid to take a bullet

while you dance and surf and fight under cover of God’s original sky mold: decaying

tape that turns eager, romantic gestures into violent subjugation: too much, too much

rewinding of a pleasant memory – or constant rental of what is not ours: borrowed

America it’s time to come home for dinner - time we talked about movies like they were

important – time to forgo the blood beat of the war dance for popcorn and sore wisdom

Baby prays for rebirth in placeholder beds of cowards; prays for absent men who would

bring back proximity threats that pulsate in sun-dressed groins: deep rich throbs,

heartsick wants to soundtrack the earth

IV

and ultimately questions the sincerity of her leading man.

as if he said secret in muted tones of

grey, as if you wanted his name to be

soft – or sacred. as if you worried his midnight

be crows feet clicking on the edge of the Catskills

click click

baby remains dumbfounded about punishment

heaped on organisms devoid of brains

in cell form