Jennifer Barber
Writing Too Fast, I Write “Thew” for “The”
As if you and I commingled
in the dark and later the same day
I give birth to little baby Thew,
born in winter under a mauve sky.
By early spring he cuts a tooth.
He sprouts a curl. The yard’s fescue
and crabgrass thicken, lapping up the sun.
Warm in my arms, little baby Thew
babbles his lips, laughing as he sees
a plane overhead, a dove on the roof
calling another on a branch.
He and I flow into you
like waves that slide across the sand
before sliding back, as they always do.
This poem was originally published in MER 21.
Jennifer Barber’s most recent collection is The Sliding Boat Our Bodies Made (The Word Works, 2022). Previous collections include Works On Paper, Given Away, and Rigging The Wind. She is the co-editor, with Jessica Greenbaum and Fred Marchant, of the anthology Tree Lines: 21st American Poems (Grayson Books, 2022). She lives in the Boston area.