Shirley

It’s not impossible, says the woman to the man in Kate’s poem —a beautiful ceremony followed by a lifetime of strife. How bad it gets isn’t clear. Just, he’s not inclined to ply her with sweet nothings, empty praises, libidinous gestures. Instead, she tells the man, you park out in our backyard, wind rifling through your branches, while I, ever the romantic, sleep safely underneath. 1 Which leaves me mulling . For it’s in a wo ods m y husband and I abide, thorned and prickly, somehow persist ing . “ You’re too chop happy,” I sometimes accuse , because h e’s forever culling, obsessed by the canopy. ( N ot enough of it? T o o preponder ant the shade? Which? Would I know?) He’s jealous for the fledglings wanting sun, I get that much. When a giant in some thunderstorm, trunk ripped, goes roaring to the ground, he’s elated. The sound, the massive crack, the tragic swish of branchery descending in slow time—for him it’s theater. He balked, though, at bringing down our yard maple...

Piggy Pink By the time we reached Pittsburgh I was enough stuffed up to crash. I looked around for the tissues box, my husband found me a wastebasket, and giving myself up to the sofa, there I mostly stayed. I kept to the one end, so as not to blow my germs on anybody, and as much as the head fog allowed, I chattered along. But you know children. They want to crowd closer and closer. In the evening, I guessed if Youngest, who loves her picture books, retreated to the area between the sofa and the wall, behind my head, I could read some stories. Then I guessed if she could get her teeth brushed and get herself to bed, I could read a little more. Upstairs, though, I didn’t slip into the bed with her. Sitting on the climb-up-to-her-bunk steps, the bed railing serving as our barrier, I read parallel to her. The other sofa in the living room, across from mine, allowed my husband and me our own infirmary suite that night. I could hew to my space. In the morning, though, family wafting to...

                  Photo courtesy of Zachary Kurtz Safe Skin, Safe Knuckles They keep snatching him. I don’t get much of a chance. It’s not that they don’t trust me, I don’t think—except one night when we were crowded in front of the World Cup, when I had Great-Grandbaby on his tummy on my lap because he liked my skirt, its soft big red flowers, they started yelling. Did they honestly think I’d let him push off, like a runner does when the gun goes off, and ram his head into the lamp and knock it over and bang onto the floor, himself? The trouble, now, is that everything goes into his mouth. In the beginning it was just his cushy wee lips making the ravishing hunger sounds or little pipsqueaks of contentment. Now he babbles to beat the band and chomps down on people’s knuckles. I’ve seen him gnawing his mother’s face, too. Faces and knuckles are good because he can’t choke. So what’s most safe, for now, is skin like that, and his cotton ...