We Interrupt This Program

(rain & snow blowing like lit numerals)
to tell you the news:
Ladies & Gentlemen:      we make mention that Mavourneen our “Fragile X”*
baby is making some progress

Still seems of another Century
in huge billowing baby gowns

But despite her disability, retardation, she’s got a high enough sense of Ceremony
not to have a melt-down
during her brother’s Baptism.

Tilting toward the Father’s holy waters
in hallucinatory fascination

She struggles to make human sounds but sounds like a small trapped animal.
She catches the eyes of all
which are pinned like an edict of salvation on the baby.

Her daddy pins all his hopes on her:
while all her thoughts are piled, precarious toys in a pyramid
of colored cubes which begins to topple

the apple-red    & whittle-white wood pooling
blue circles:
John the Baptist’s head was brought in on a platter.
Not dainty
or nice as ice on lace.

But she holds her flock high in milky air
enjoying the corduroy sound her dress is making
against her plump thighs during their Baptism

like her track suit.
“She wants to be shy again,” her brother begins to explain to the Priest who nods, he understands.
Soon she’ll be back home spanking her orange jello till the pile shimmers

like taffeta
like an icon
of neon.
       Her mother remembers the morning she was delivered
       invisible God-prints all over her
       like the cellophane, lime green, wrapping one dozen American beauty roses translucent, thorned.

This is KOA, Kansas This show is brought to you by "Cornhusker's Lotion." We
now return to our scheduled program:
       You can resume your evening’s occupation:
              reading, ironing.

*  Fragile X syndrome is the most common genetic form of mental retardation