the air burns sweet in our afternoon
bed     the stain and stink of feeding this
tiny vomiting human     this small
pale     for a window too brief     biter
of whatever’s before him     and he
 
swings the plastic turtle in an arc
     violent and blind and unconcerned he
hits his mother’s face     it’s not his will
hitting his own meek nose with a squid
 
smuggled in his fist from the bathtub
to bed     us three together     our love
menagerie horizontal here
in the splash zone of his personing 
     here in the sickly nest we’ve laundered
 
not recently enough     what we put
inside our son is still spilling forth
in gloppy white streams     this fermented
bile cheese drips from his unconcerned chin
 
into the bed we made him in     now
sexual as a bird autopsy
     we are pinned here beneath     beside him
     our son grand and leaking our son grown
clutching and heat-hungry between us