Irritated, Watching a Living Nativity (Poem)
I peer into half-lit faces Gazing rapt at this purported nativity, Glowing from eggnog and the “miracle of birth." Two gangly teens in bedsheets, Their eyes not sunken From a shameful pregnancy, Travel in the third trimester, Or the wracking anticipation of contractions, Hold a swaddled plastic child— Unbloodied, uncrying, inhuman. The magi are a year too early And don’t herald infanticide. The shepherds are too respectable. Nothing smells of excrement. The true miracle feels unbeheld. To be born is, to a child, A first foretaste of dying. To go from amniotic warmth— Squeezed, crushed, rejected— Into the biting air of living, Harshly lit and uncradled. It doesn’t take a stable To make it a humiliation; It takes every trick of neurochemistry For us not to recoil. To be born is, to a god, Insane and nearly blasphemy. Ineffable inscrutability Poured into a shifting-plated skull, Angel armies taking counsel From a newborn’s burbles, Immortality haunted by the Numberable heartb...
