Catherine Wagner
Perfect Love
West House Anthology
 
 
Today Ambrose rolled over for the first time since in the pub with Damaris and Adam; twice today. Also, he objected when I tried to take away my waterbottle.

And, I will love my fellow people with a perfect love.

Working for another until one is more than exhausted is not the same as having perfect love for him.

I hate the baby, stop crying.
I hate you and put you down.
I hate you coming over my life like a bag.

Then inside the bag
a garden bigger than the inside of my eye
high protective walls
too far away to see
invisibles twitching and uncovering themselves

I think I made that up so no one will take the baby away.

anyway, sometimes thus and sometimes
choked down in the hard tight bag.

The imprisoner was time, or my sense of it.
He is a great suction, fattening
on my trés rich hours.
And just as inside the bag it is
bigger and safer, so my hours
are not mine and
more.

So I write a moralizing poem
so a poem to feel better.
You too can write a poem to feel better.
It can’t complain. Do what
I want to it. Snip it off short.
Some people did that
to a child.
I will let the poem grow, then
go back and prune it, and hope
the E in it whangs harder
inside the smaller cell.
My child can whang unpruned – no, I’m espaliering him
can’t help that.

Everyone was born inside a bag
and came out here, to a bag
of atmosphere
and satellites
where we’ll all live inside cool greenhouse plastic
when the world is too hot.
Inside a bag my son will go and live
he can look down here to the fried-up
water and say, Fuck you for driving so much
and fuck you for crying, and look at
the inside of our bag! It’s all vines.

He can have vines because I can’t drink wine
while I’m breastfeeding.
Tyrant. Asleep and saying huu,
fantastic waxen kicking
figurine, like a kick in the head, little
fat bag, a drug
I see more of the
him in.