"Mother and Child" by Nadia Huggins.
© Please do not reproduce without artist's permission.
LEARNING TO SMILE
by Andrew Collard
Forgotten mail
piles on
the kitchen
table,
as I sit
blowdrying
a bassinet
at midnight.
Water rises from
my basement’s drain
and the TV says
another boy’s
been shot
somewhere:
one more
explanation
I’ll be missing
when my newborn
son is old enough
to ask.
His cries drift
downstairs
as new sensations
overwhelm
what stitches
his world together.
Like fragments
of broadcast:
light, exhaustion
hunger.
The last
is an absence
I recognize
as updates
reach my phone,
a man
with dark skin
raising hands
and shouting
while a red dot
hovers
on his chest.
I can’t
put the pieces
together,
lines of masked
men
pointing weapons,
ready to bring
the hammer
down on principle.
My son’s
learning how
to smile
as I scrub
my basement,
pulling up
carpet where
the flood
seeped,
and ignoring
the mouth
that’s grown
in the drywall
whispering
it’s time to move.
I take the garbage
to the curb
in plastic bags,
leaving them
beside my neighbor’s
couch
and a dozen
damp boxes
down the street.
Andrew Collard lives in Madison Heights, MI, and attends Oakland University. Recent poems are forthcoming from A Minor, Word Riot, and Posit.
