Eric Morris
My parents, God bless their detachable limbs,
devised an experiment of me. One for the ages.
One of necromancy and tragedy, and enacted
the ongoing dialogue they carried between them.
Can we, when properly self-medicated and anointed,
raise our not-yet-dead son from the afterlife we conjured
of Michigan? Results are pending my early resurrection.
Under their tongues, they debated, like lost astronauts,
the immeasurable misfortunes of childrearing when
one has no patience for domesticating persons.
How then to teach it motion? And motion, why motion?
Why not traction, refrain his organs from growing
like woolen moss, unbroken? Has he not yet been beaten?
They then conceded the caesarian section should have
at least been considered. What a hapless fancy?
How hapless my biorhythms—all their misleadings?
I forgot, due to infomercials and an ailing biological clock,
to number the days I incubated. Mother and father
left tallies in the tree trunks and on the bedposts of lovers
I only imagined I’d conquer with serenades and saccharine.
Unrealistic lovers, be warned, I lambasted, I mean you
only harm. Undesirable parents, be warmed, I theorized,
I’ve found good use—flapping motions—for these arms.