In the Circle 1
BY SCOTT FREY
We wheel our daughter beside the orbs
and butterflies strung from tall windows
to help the light sashay in. We prop
her between us
on the preschool carpet,
her classmates velcroed in standers
or reclining in foam chairs
with their orthopedic vests.
We sing and drum each child’s name.
We ask our friend: Is your son back
to eating by mouth?
The music therapist’s beads clack a beat
as she strums, “If You’re Happy
and You Know It.” We replace
the words your face will surely
with you really want to.
Beside the ache near our lungs
is something like joy.
In the circle we help our kids to clap.
Watch them shimmer.
Half will die in a couple years.
At each funeral we’ll embrace
like college friends at weddings.
I take my daughter’s large hands
—mitts, my buddy calls them with a nod—
and we clap away against disaster.
G-Tube Ode
BY SCOTT FREY
When all attempts to deliver
by mouth what our daughter needs
will choke and kill her
you are the door
cut through ab and stomach lining
a silicone frame some make
into a sign for vegetative states
you who we resisted
of whom they say common
for kids with her type
of difficulties
you a reminder
of the wonder of avocados
squelched from cheek pocket
to cheek pocket
you coil on her belly
a twin-mouthed serpent
sunning itself
when we forget to click your clamp
before opening the end
of your tube then all the food
and meds we’ve prepared for her
pour back into our laps
when the pressure mounts
no outlet for her gas expanding
until we attach the big syringe
holding it upright
so the bubbles climb
towards heaven
you the site
of bolus and infusion
which the funeral director told us
he pulled from her body
as he prepared it
his voice trembling
the site now open
like the hole in the earth
to receive her
the only blemish
in the smooth lake of her skin
scratching his head
he confessed he wept
he who has laid so many children to rest
wanting her to enter the grave whole
without your silicone shell
that does not know pain
does not know decay
that will not rejoin the earth
Little Girl Goes to Heaven While Her Parents Watching (emotional)
BY SCOTT FREY
In the screen’s light inches from his face
an astronaut on a rocket scooter
tumbles across her gown. She has
an IV, a blood pressure cuff, a face
pink behind her nasal cannula.
I’m glued where I’ve crept
to peer over my son’s shoulder
while he studies YouTube
for sense in social situations.
Rehearsing life.
He can’t put into words how he arrived
at Little Girl Goes to Heaven
While Her Parents Watching (emotional)
instead of skateboards and sneaker heads.
It has nineteen million views.
I know this little girl’s not dying,
her dad’s hand at her hip,
mom’s hand on her brow,
because after years in hospitals
my daughter died in my lap at this age.
In the screen’s light the gray in his eyes
eats the blue. His lips
mouth the words the little girl prays,
Now I lay me down to sleep.
Not long ago, he was licking
the floor in the Walmart toy aisle,
smearing input on his hungry tongue.
In the video the girl tells the nurse
removing her IV, Thank you for helping me.
She asks, Will I feel normal again?
and there’s that word he’s chasing,
knocking his fist to his palm
along with her, playing rock-paper-
scissors behind the bed’s tall rail.
Yesterday he said, Bam! as he
finished math problems. Bam!
crossing off each one.
In my throat, words about editing,
how actors play surgeons,
how bold white letters filling
a screen don’t make a thing true.
I reach my hands to his shoulders
and squeeze, giving the pressure
he seeks when wedging himself
deep in snow or asking us to bury him
in sand. In the video, the girl’s
fallen asleep. As she wakes, she asks,
Am I here? When she answers,
he says along with her, I’m here!
