Idra Novey

If our view were not a Holiday Inn
but a fringe of trees, I could say G here
is our greenly hidden.
If we lived
amid Joe-Pye weed and high grass
instead of spackle and peeling plaster
I could say perhaps
I'm listening to G now
but mean the owl, a wind playing the silo,
a sticking sorrow,
any sound but the snore
of our latest visitor on the futon. Dear G,
please make him turn, make me kinder.
I'm not far from unfathoming it all.
...

Does no dishes, dribbles sauce
across the floor. Is more dragon
than spaniel, more flammable
than fluid. Is the loosening
in the knit of me, the mixed-fruit
marmalade in the kitchen of me.
Wakes my disco and inner hibiscus,
the Hector in the ever-mess of my Troy.
All wet mattress to my analysis,
he's stayed the loudest and longest
of any houseguest, is calling now
as I write this, tiny B who brings the joy.
...

He had to have it, his mother told him. How could he not, with so few left in the world? He felt heaviest at night with the miracle of it. He was a vessel now. A receptacle for a threatened being. What if he rose too fast and killed it? Or maybe his stillness would do it, too much sitting around, stunned and hungry. And what if the bear emerged alive and another formed in its place, would he have to have that one, too, and another one after that?


He dreamed of the panda's tiny eyes opening inside him, the doctor's wide incision, a whirring pain, and then the furry thing emerging, the bear turning to him as to a stranger and whether that would be it—his bit part in the history of the future.
...