Hard Labor.
When they first presented her with the baby she said,
I don't ever want to see this fucking thing again.
The next day she relented, and with stiff arms
received the soft and weightless bundle, glared away
her husband and the nurse.
She stroked the fontanel and looked inside.
A cloud swirled.
Snow was falling.
A fat baby spun around on a spike, slower and slower.
She turned it over and shook it a bit,
and started it snowing again.
The baby spun.
I remember an old woman, so angry
at her son she threatened to put him back where he came from.
In Rome, the nursing mother of a bastard child
would smear her breasts with opium.
In Herod's massacre of the innocents,
all were slain, except the one he aimed for.