Mom smiles, lifts up her new born,
and admires a new life; she learns perfection.
Zealous to wan, she watches monsters
caress her baby with corrupted hands.  
It took a second for the elastic curve
of her smile to snap back into place.
She steps back, back into place
with an idea she could not have born
alone. Because of a spine that would curve,
Mom’s head bends crooked in pursuit of perfection.
Still, every night, she lifts up two pure hands
reluctantly, praising God for the monsters
She hates. She sees her baby become like monsters:
it plays like them, it talks like them, it finds a place
with them.  Mom wrings her holy hands
wishing  her bambino could be born
again. Her baby pitter patters by perfection;
a straight line that’s beginning to curve.
Mom waits for her Redwood to curve
away from its upward growth to her divine hands,
believing she can change nature to godly perfection.
She anoints her baby with knowledge of where its place
is, and Mom doesn’t remember how to be born,
And Baby looks down to see her own stained hands.
In the cruel glass reflection, Baby’s hands
look tiny. Pride distorts and shrinks in to the curves
of the funhouse mirror. Baby thinks she’s just been born,
But her world has seen only small monsters.
A minute behind the glass puts Baby in her place,
but reaction formation caught her perfection.
Baby bends backwards, is a mess for perfection.
Shaming her backwards, Mom hands
Baby an effigy to carve herself into a better place.
Mom caroused, courses the delicate curve
of Baby into callous strength like a monster’s.
She is stifled and by Mom’s words she is born.

Dragged along and driven to curve,
Dreary Baby puts her warm thighs over her cold hands
And again Mom waits to be born.