Li’l body all packed up bright with white lights,
A green strand of broken glass, sidewalk-strewn.
Who would just leave a baby Jesus out
In their front lawn for anyone to take?
Lungs spent up, crackling like the cinders
That snap-pop beneath my strip-soled sneakers,
I run until I forget where I am,
Leave the lights behind and hold his body
Close to mine: small, dark, hollow, hard. I was
Lost and Mary knew it. Her stare impugned
Crudely from the crudeness of that crude die
In which her form was cast—bewildering
Sight—her image shrinking in the glow
That lights the rising expanse between us.
Caleb Curtiss is a poet and teacher based in northern Delaware and author of A Taxonomy of the Space Between Us, which won the Black River Chapbook Competition. His poetry and criticism have appeared in the Southern Review, Gettysburg Review, Denver Quarterly, and New England Review.
