Now It’s a World

Winter, 2014–2015 / No. 34

The radio is a mute tortoise, and beneath

our perception the thousand things it’d say

drum like impatient fingers on the window,

as each car on the street pushes a killing space

ahead of it. Now it’s a world with my daughter

in it, and nothing matters more to me. Last night

I balanced a book on my head at dinner

because it made her beam. Electricity hides

in the walls, wanting to stop our hearts.

But in a shell of safety she puts Superman

in a pink toy stroller and wheels him away,

all muscled patience. Soon enough, this will be

the forgotten soft loam of early childhood,

below the floorboards of her memory. Already,

the world I remember has been replaced:

people sit quietly together stroking devices

as though putting a curl of hair behind an ear,

even as the stars above, slowly turning screws,

will bring her a new life, and another one.