The camera invades his privacy.
My son squirms away, shifts in his elastic sea,
pushes off the tissue and muscle
that constrains and consoles from the beginning.
His foot presses up against the wall of me,
as though I were below, looking up
through a crinkled, cellophane ceiling,
where his black and white heart beats,
and his tiny toes press ten steady marks
on the screen. Technicians measure
his body, as superstitiously I foresee
his inclination to retreat.
Once in a heated argument, my mother said
she never really knew me. Her eyes red and teary
ensured she couldn't see herself in my face,
but I still feel the pinch of her looking.
Kathi Morrison-Taylor lives in Arlington, VA with her husband and two kids and teaches ESOL (English-to-Speakers-of-Other-Languages) at a local middle school. In the summer, she co-hosts the Joaquin Miller Poetry Series in Washington DC's Rock Creek Park. "Ultrasound" is the first poem in Kathi's brand new, first book of poems, By the Nest
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