Philip Schaefer

Letter to Infant Baptism

You took a shit on the floor & made a mural on the wall
with your forearms. Some days I wish you were never
born. No moral code outside your own cornucopia brain.
I want to pick up a hot tub & dump it on the animal
of your face. I want to baptize you in the name of fatherly rage.
You laugh soft & insane & those twin dimples beam
like stars from either side of your gaze. You rip
through me like a gun. You open my chest & inscribe
your place. I pick you up & for the next half hour am dead forever.

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