chapter 2
Poem
HUFFINGTON
09.23.12
Valet
Angelus
by
john
hennessy
John Hennessy
is the author of
Bridge and Tunnel
(Turning Point
Books/Word Press
2007), a collection
of poems, and his
work appears or is
forthcoming in The
Believer, Poetry,
The New Republic,
Harvard Review,
The Yale Review,
and other journals
and anthologies.
Shirt first I pull him out of sleep,
curry, clip, preen, tog, bear clean
underwear, hoist him into darkness, rude
as that first blue shake while his mother bled
(the midwife saved her with a shot of pitocin
stuck hard in the thigh, postpartum contractions—
some other era surely she’s gone
and he and I enact a Dickens plot),
straight-faced he suffers me, long yawns,
magnificent, my tiny gentleman,
my morning wren, his pants with skulls
on both back pockets, he faces hell’s
new Punch and Judy with complacency,
now he’s too old but I used to kiss his feet,
their hint of vinegar, I’m still fierce
as any disciple, these convert works
before the school bus comes, I’d use my hair,
anoint him, here, he’s laughing, here.