Michael Maggiotto

From Where I Sit

the window beside the door
is alive
with the prints of fingers, noses and tongues
that haze all shape and color,
as if the world exists
only through a spider's web.

there is a Doppler of flies,
a pointillist's bed of impatiens,
a beakless hummingbird,
a smoke sky above the corn.

with one wipe of my cloth,
I could change the world.

Only Child

How different his children,
for having each other,
so prepared for the committee of life.
Cousins, friends—acquaintances, really—never
breach intimacy's walls,
though they effortlessly cut one's very thin skin.
Trust hides under rules, behind manners,
in a plastic world that melts
at passion's unexpected touch,
where one says one without snicker,
and blushes at you and thou.
It complicates marriage.
There is a sociology of birth order—
important, no doubt, to first, middle and last—
but, for the solitary, redundant past two.
To this day, he mourns
his sister,
who died in the womb.

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