The Beast

When I had my first child I became a beast.

There was nothing like love in me.

There was something I remembered,

something that twisted

our from my shoulders—a neck,

and on top of it the head

of a father.

I made up stories about this man.

How he beat his children.

How he kissed them.

How he never could make up his mind.

I made up more stories and I told them

to my son, not with my words

but with every action

my body like a puppet, lit up from within,

a temple, an egg, an empty nest.

I knew things about him, this father.

He wore huge shoes and I slept in them, woke

up in them old and smelly

like leather, like diapers.

When I first became a child I was a beast.

Dirty. Unfit.

I knew my father by his voice, his walk

the way he stumbled

beneath my featherweight

the way he hid from me

the way he looked me

in the eye, once or twice

a day a week a year,

the way he told me, “This is love.

Take it or leave it.”

So I did.

The Outing

A parked car full of groceries,

an empty parking lot,

an out-of-business coffee shop

in early spring, so early

that it could pass for winter.

I’m sitting in that car,

sunlight on my face, listening –

heaps of snow melting, birds singing

cars hissing over damp concrete.

I came here for tea

and a moment to myself.

Perhaps that’s why I’m crying.

Perhaps this is that moment.

Three miles from my house,

my life, my wife, my kids, my dirty socks,

I fall apart, become

this nothingness of air

and breathing, this world

rushing into me, again

and again and

marilyn annucci