Voice Recognition
Turkey looked right at us,
started to approach.
I looked both ways,
then down at the carriage,
crossed the road, stopped
at the other side. Turkey
followed, but instead stopped
in the middle. He was large
enough, and ugly enough,
that cars from both directions
had to stop too. We all waited.
Turkey gestured with his neck:
“Everybody relax,” he said.
“I just want to see the baby.
I’m not going to bite its god damned
head off. Which world is this?”
***
When the darkness comes
it’s merely interesting
at first, then impractical.
Once we realize this is the way
it’ll be for awhile, we wake
slower, move slower, and the world
we dream becomes brighter
if more horrible than the one we walk.
***
I’m shaving, and the towels
on hooks have begun to move.
That, or my eyes are shaking.
***
On the day our world is meant to end
a better prepared student of mine
is wearing a full tiger costume--
in case, she tells me, it’s just
people they’re after and not
the whole planet. Last minute
decision, she says, to disguise
instead of protect. In her closet,
she tells me, hangs the tinfoil hat
that would block the aliens
from sucking out her brains.
When I get home, I make two batches
of soup to freeze, one beet
and one butternut squash.
My daughter can live on this
until her teeth come in.
If they spare the babies,
I believe they will care for them
as best they can, but I doubt
they will know how to make
gourmet baby grub.
***
The poinsettias are oozing
their sap, the kind
poisonous to animals.
My daughter sits in
the shopping cart trying
to rip off a leaf
and put it in her mouth.
***
They say I’m slowly roasting
when I hold the phone to my ear,
but they only say this over the phone.
It’s either talk to them and die,
or talk only to myself. If I’m going
to talk to myself, I’d prefer
to write it down: a man who mutters
aloud is deluded, while one who writes
his mutterings is artistic,
but is an artist whose art nobody likes
more deluded than a man who talks
to himself? And so I sit here
typing to myself--but because I’ll also be
nuked, they tell me, if I rest a computer
on my lap, I’m tapping my fingers on a small,
green pillow, the one that came with the couch,
talking to the computer against the wall
on the other side of the room,
feeling brilliant and safe.
***
It’s the worst epidemic
in decades, they say,
so I’m at the YMCA clinic
getting a free shot.
My eight-month-old
laughs a knowing laugh
as if to say, I, who know
almost nothing, know
what that is like:
O, Hairy-Shouldered Beast,
I’m glad it’s you, not me.
***
With my teeth I remove
edamame from their pods,
chew them, spit them
into my hand for her
to scoop into her mouth.
I’m feeding her beet soup,
which is getting all over her face
and neck, and some in her hair
and ears. She looks like
she’s eaten a live bat.
***
Behind me the poinsettias
we bought are making noises
like sneezes or advice.
***
When my daughter stands
on my lap, she jumps
and stomps repeatedly
on my groin. That’s all
you got? I shout.
Sixteen pounds ain’t shit!
She doesn’t know anything.
She can’t talk, yet I am
sure she’s telling me
she doesn’t want a sibling.
***
I bite off a piece of cantaloupe,
smash it between my teeth enough
to swallow, but leave
as much juice as possible.
I pull it out with my fingers,
hold it between us, and she
closes her lips around it.
I pull a roast chicken out
of the oven, rip into the skin
of the leg and pull off
a piece of dark meat,
hold it while it cools.
She takes it between thumb
and forefinger to her mouth.
We do the same again, but she’s
distracted by the noise of the wind
shaking the house, forgets what
she’s doing, crushes the meat
in her fist, sticks her other hand
out for more.
***
The baby who
does not want
to miss any-
thing wakes
every time
we step
on the wood
floor, so I fill
each crack
with graphite
dust, which
they say
will solve
our problem.
It does not
matter when
the upstairs
landlady’s
three-hundred-
pound son
wears work boots
to the bathroom
in the night.
***
It’s down to the single digits,
so we’re taking our walk through
the kitchen store at the mall.
She reaches for some plastic
measuring spoons on a ring
and fits a teaspoon and a half
in her mouth while producing
one and three quarter tablespoons
of drool. I look around and don’t see
a single sign saying you lick it, you buy it.
I take the whole business away
and place it back where it belongs.
***
We brought home from Home Depot
a six-foot balsam fir, stuck it
in the stand with some water.
My wife put up some white lights
while I watched football on TV
and shouted, “You bastard! You bastard!”
***
What changes? Her piss smells
like cheap beer, so I don’t mind
getting it on my hands. If I change
her diaper late at night,
I get up in the morning
smelling like a really good
party. So, nothing.
***
It’s early. I’m doing work
on the living room couch:
drinking tea, staring at a screen.
I hear her cry in the nursery,
place my cup on the cushion
beside me so I can go to her.
I hear a thump and a muffled wail
from our bedroom. Have you fallen?
I call to you, and get no answer.
I hear dripping, look down to see
I’ve knocked over the tea
on the couch. I must rescue you
from the floor, but I know
you’ll be angry if I don’t clean
what is now seeping through the cushion.
I can’t wait to tell you
the news, when I rescue you,
that I’ve cleaned the tea.
***
The stewpot becomes a snow globe
for the instant I add a fistful
of salt. Sometimes I must
tell myself to keep breathing.
—Andrew Bennett, Boston, MA
