| Watching the Horizon
The baby’s heart beats like Siamese fish mouths on the black and green computer screen. The OB tech says “It has four chambers. That’s good.” The mouths open, close, open, close, open then the monitor trembles, landscapes fill chalky black hills and curves, two footprints transform into a skull’s eyes and nose-hole, then whisp, ghost, strange caverns, this, my son or daughter, hands up like a boxer, feet by those fists like a mystic, person floating in and out of view: there’s femur, there’s spine, there are palms shading the face which surfaces through the wrong side of the head; intrusive look, we stare through thick fog of womb, we stare at the shape, at the shape just coming in to view. |
Matt's new book, Things We Don't Know We Don't Know, is available from Backwaters Press.