Madeline Weiss

ROUNDED UP TO 67

Days are made of the wet leaves. I dream of a telephone,
I find a clothesline. Someone once built it here. I crush
cans and find children to kick them. I welded my own armor
and the armor found a new opportunity in San Francisco.

Somebody is crying but it is not me. I walk around
with this bag and pretend it is full of little cloths with which
I can pick up a single potato and pocket it. The night is quick.
The day is sliding on the oil floor.

I am in that car on that hill. There is a giant spider, my lips
are perfectly done. Alive and kicking, I swallow the spider
whole. It is dry in my throat I need a drink of water.
The spider laid eggs in my blood, and I parented
hundreds of little spiders.

How could I be prouder? We build the earth. That baby
is doing very well in school. That baby
is trying on my lipstick. That baby
is beloved at church. That baby
asked me about her father.

I am your father, I tell my baby.
I swallowed your mother whole.

Madeline Weiss is a poet living in Pittsburgh. She has been published in h_ngm_n, Nauseated Drive, and elsewhere. She is the author of the 2013 NAP e-chap Rodentia and Other Guilty Small Animals. She has been in Wyoming, where you have not heard from here.