Kathryn Jacobs is a professor at Texas A & M - C with a degree from Harvard and a new book out, In Transit, from David Roberts Books (2011). She also has three chapbooks, a book on medieval marriage contracts, and about 140 published poems in journals like New Formalist, Acumen, Loch Raven Review, Whiskey Island, Xavier, etc. Currently she is teaching at Texas A & M - C via Michigan (the usual "two body" problem). She has two thriving daughters, but lost her Son Raymond in 2005, at 18.
Summer 2012
Table of Contents - Vol. VIII, No. 2
Poetry Fiction Translations Reviews
Kathryn Jacobs
(For Ray, who didn't make it)
So many wrinkled babies, filed away
like index cards in incubated glass
by high-paid clerks in scrubs. A wall of slots,
each with their separate letter: baby B.
The mind takes over: "primate, certainly."
Although they look a lot like porcupines
all-over acupuncture: stainless steel
with plastic drips attached—
Get over it.
A drink of water, bathroom: stay awake.
A brand new person with an old-man face
and grimaces that suck, sporadically.
They look like closet babies: wide-eyed blink.
Face, taut from listening to rustle-sounds
and fearing he’ll be next. He waver-smiles
at all the high-paid clerks who puncture him.
Try not to touch the buttocks. Empty sacks
with bones inside; you hate to diaper him.
One wrinkled baby (Can I iron him?)
I know, bad joke. It works though; I'm still sane.
© Kathryn Jacobs
