Is it true the female  
body is designed for it 
given that month after month  
I make myself a carrier  
for various pains:  
for the sting of snow  
as I reach barehanded  
for the glove my son  
dropped in the yard. 
For the baby’s thinning gum 
I touch with cold cloths.  
Laundry loads. Burns  
from pans. Catching vomit  
in my hands: this, I joke 
is my intuitive superpower.  
For my knees, saying I should’ve 
been more careful to stay in  
the joint’s natural range. The years  
I spent carrying, propelling  
myself and then others.  
For the homesick student  
held last night against her will,  
she who now believes her  
own detachment will be her  
life’s sumtotal. There’s more, 
I tell her.  
There’s more. 
For my wife, whose body 
spontaneously aborted  
twice, my arms lifting her  
from our blackwhiteblack  
of bathroom tile, six blocks 
away from the Capitol  
where we will let Them 
make the decision. My wife  
who has torn twice in service  
of others’ delivery: once  
in the rectum, once in the clit.  
Both times I watched, unable  
to take any meaning away.  
For my five-year-old son  
who tries not to cry now 
as he tells me two boys  
he is desperate to hug 
knocked him over,  
wouldn’t let him  
get up. The wolf of me 
aches to strike them  
but this is not allowed.  
Instead I tell him: back away,
understand not everybody  
wants like you want.  
For the well-meaning people  
who say: but because he has you 
he’ll still turn out okay. 
Does you mean my purpose 
is to shoulder injury or just  
to counterbalance bitterness.  
For when the president mocks  
the kind of man my son  
may one day become, 
his president’s hands fake- 
flapping while his mouth  
writes orders to ax our  
livelihood, blast the land,  
cage children at borders.  
You might say I am resigned.  
I am not resigned.  
For that abnormal growth  
that has resigned me back  
into the doctor’s office, hearing  
I’m now at risk for everything  
because I never properly bore  
my own inside my body, 
that chance to fully curfew  
my rhythm’s natural swell.  
I ask, is this my reckoning.  
Once, traveling up north 
on the second day, no place  
of decency to collect or manage,  
I crouched low along the rock,  
my blood falling straight to snow.