A toddler trundles from mom to dad,
punched in one weekend, someone punched out the next,
his parent’s little plaything. He’s learned
to be leashed up like last birthday’s puppy,
transported everywhere by adults who’ve held
a grudge since the candles were blown to smoke.
It always just means another year to ride this shuttle
in a kennel. On arrivals they make fists of the hand that grasps
his fingers and the other to rap on the
sliding screen door, shaking it in its frame.
The yelling starts welling from that very moment
from the inside, he knows;
of the house, the muscles of his mother,
frownlines of his father. The pane reveals them
to one another and they let the anguish
loose. He always jerks with the rhythm of it,
the jabbing and yanking and stamping, between
two bulls sharing one arena;
he is little like a red flag, never turning white enough
to make them surrender the battle and realize
they’ve already produced the prize. He just
quakes there on their shaky ground, too meek
to join the beasts.
If his mouth were able
he’d shout too, louder than them both,
how they make him feel like a tiny guppy
floundering, caught in the fangs they’re
gnashing at each other. It’s silly that humans
can’t believe what the animal kingdom has sanctioned,
when we’re all observed
eviscerating our own offspring.
butfatherijustwanttowrite 