Jeffrey McDaniel (1967 / Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)

For my eighth birthday
I got a toy train set
my father helped assemble.

My job was to hand him
pieces of track and re-light
the cigarettes that went out

in his mouth. Halfway
through, I asked him
where babies come from.

He told me that eight years
ago today I showed up
on the front stoop

in a cardboard box, how
he spent the whole afternoon
putting me together,

just like this train set,
that I was probably lucky
the box arrived on a Saturday.