The coffee-colored pig roils its red bed of mud.
A line of yellow dots, like Caspian eggs or cartoon spittle,
tracer from its hooves, all the way to the edge of the page and off,
onto tablecloth and wayward skin.
The backward boy draws his alliance of animals,
mythic or monstrous, never once what he will see in nature.
-Is that your pig? the brave young nurse asks,
bending beside him, hands on knees, the wisps of hair
that fringe her collar trembling the father’s heart,
lidding hard the sounds that bore him near to tears.
-Is that your pig and does he have a name?
The child is remotely his, the nurse not his at all.
And bracketed together his standby status
seems more and more the mere formality of hope unrewarded.
Into this self-reliant frame his virtues have been led,
his worldly vita made to look as gullible as ‘eat, drink and be merry’.
The nurse has her questions, his boy has the pig.
His own next move is starved for satisfaction,
although a pile of pamphlets and the on-site counselor
assure him he is not to blame.
To put away self-accusation is said to be as easy
as stripping off a soiled shirt.
He waits for a word with the fantasy nurse,
desire the unexpected Janus-face of grief.
But Nurse is hypnotized by the artful autism
that looks through and round her, then looks back down
and drowns in the comfort of color.
It’s a quarter till but he won’t wait to hear
it’s time for visitors to leave,
and walks alone out to his car.
The District sky is starless,
the air is humid as Saigon,
he’ll weep halfway round the Beltway
and turn the radio on one exit before his own.