we say,
as the child slaps the bottle from my hand
but opens wide for Daddy,
Daddy Phase,
perfectly natural, just a stage,
as she calls for him upon waking,
Daddy Phase as he rises to her, tired but flattered,
pretending I'm the lucky one, inviting me to keep sleeping
as if I care to keep sleeping
on the stale white bread
of this marriage bed, Daddy Phase—
me, I'm a huge bland lawn jockey
and she, she is a perfect
size zero, gigging the tireless horse of her father
back and forth across the kitchen tile
I think she just pretends to be a baby
I would like to pitch a fit
when she ducks my kiss
my lips two fat hot dogs
cooling at the drive-thru,
but would she bother to notice?
Would she feel compelled to empathize?
No,
because she's a BABY,
it's a brilliant plan
A determined competitor, I
diversify my offerings
Have you seen this one? I ask her,
apparently she has
If only she still drank my milk
still drank my bloodwarm milk
then I could squeeze her, squeeze her, squeeze her
Oh, there were entire years before she existed,
years of the single fare, years of the road trip,
years of the fishnets and the fake ID,
the Doc Martens, the come-as-you-are,
the backpack, hipflask, do-not-disturb,
I used to be a restaurant hostess Oh I had the power then,
tapping a pencil on my bottom lip
or slipping it whisperingly down the waiting list,
the tips that I palmed,
the gents that I stacked like quarters on a pool table—
one crook of my long red nail,
how they would leap to my side
but now,
now we're in the Daddy Phase
so now I remember
that each spring I'd discover
in the restaurant coat check room
some sad brown parka,
forgotten, forsaken—
so now I feel the elbows
of the empty wire hangers,
so now I hear them titter and hiss
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Copyright © 2004
All rights reserved.
Reprinted from Tender Hooks by Beth Ann Fennelly © 2004 by Beth Ann Fennelly. Reproduced by mamazine.com with permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Beth Ann Fennelly received a 2003 National Endowment for the Arts Award. Her book Open House
won The 2001 Kenyon Review Prize for a First Book and the GLCA New Writers Award. Her new book, Tender Hooks, was published in April 2004, by W. W. Norton. A book of essays, Great with Child: Letters to a Young Mother, is forthcoming from Norton in 2006. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Mississippi, and lives in Oxford, MS.
