Our Andromeda by Brenda Shaughnessy Page B

itself

    in the dark, and becomes
    nothing when the real light

    comes. It is enough to make
    even the simplest organism

    insane. Why did the chicken
    cross the unplowed road?

    Because it was trying
    to beat the egg to the other side.

    It wanted to be first,
    at last, and to stay first,

    at least until the day
    breaks itself sunny side,

    and the rooster crows.
    The only snows are dark snows.

Liquid Flesh

    In a light chocolatine room
    with blackout windows,
    a loud clock drowns in soft dawn’s

    syllables, crisscrossed
    with a broken cloudiness
    I’d choose as my own bedcovers

    but cannot. My choice of sleep
    or sky has no music of its own.
    There’s no “its own” while the baby cries.

    Oh, the baby cries. He howls and claws
    like a wrongly minor red wolf
    who doesn’t know his mother.

    I know I am his mother, but I can’t
    quite click on the word’s essential aspects,
    can’t denude the flora

    or disrobe the kind of housecoat
    â€œmother” always is. Something
    cunty, something used.

    Whatever meaning the word itself
    is covering, like underwear,
    that meaning is so mere and meager

    this morning. Mother. Baby.
    Chicken and egg. It’s so obnoxious
    of me: I was an egg

    who had an egg
    and now I’m chicken,
    as usual scooping up

    both possibilities,
    or what I used to call
    possibilities. I used

    to be this way, so ontologically
    greedy, wanting to be it all.
    Serves me right.

    My belief in the fluidity
    of the self turns out to mean
    my me is a flow of wellwater,

    without the well, or the bucket,
    a hole dug and seeping.
    A kind of unwell, where

    the ground reabsorbs
    what it was displaced to give.
    The drain gives meaning to the sieve.

    As I said: a chicken who still
    wants to be all potential.
    Someone who springs

    and falls, who cannot see
    how many of us I have
    in me—and I do not like them all.

    Do I like us? Can I love us?
    If anyone comes
    first it’s him, but how can that be?

    I was here way, way first.
    I have the breasts, godawful, and he
    the lungs and we share the despair.

    For we are a we, aren’t we? We split
    a self in such a way that there isn’t
    enough for either of us.

    The father of the baby is sleepy
    and present in his way, in the way
    of fathers. He is devoted like

    few fathers and maybe hurts
    like I hurt, like no fathers.
    I don’t know what someone else

    feels, not even these someones
    who are also me. Do they hurt
    like I do? Why can’t they

    tell me, or morse or sign: let
    me know they know where and how
    and why it hurts? Or something?

    What is the point of other people,
    being so separate, if we can’t
    help a person get that pain

    will stick its shiv into anything,
    just to get rid of the weapon
    and because it can? For if we share

    ourselves then they, too, must
    also be in so much pain.
    I can hear it. Oh, my loves.

    The wood of the crib, the white
    glow of the milk (which must
    have siphoned off the one

    and only pure part of me, leaving
    me with what, toxicity
    or sin or mush?), the awful softness.

    I’ve been melted into something
    too easy to spill. I make more
    and more of myself in order

    to make more and more of the baby.
    He takes it, this making. And somehow
    he’s made more of me, too.

    I’m a mother now.
    I run to the bathroom, run
    to the kitchen, run to the crib

    and I’m not even running.
    These places just scare up as needed,
    the wires that move my hands

    to the sink, to the baby,
    to the breast are electrical.
    I’m in shock.

    One must be in shock to say so,
    as if one’s own state is assessable,
    like a car accident or Minnesota taxes.

    A total disaster, this sack of liquid
    flesh which yowls and leaks
    and I’m talking about me

    not the baby. Me, this puddle
    of a middle, this utilized vessel,
    cracked hull, divine

    design. It’s how it works. It’s how
    we all got here. Deform
    following the function…

    But what