I find myself interested in writing about new fatherhood and how care affects, expands, and complicates masculinity. I wrote this poem this very week:

Deciduous Hymn

Light listens at his body busy
Worlding itself
Into a Wednesday, an afternoon
glowingrowing
As the two begin to coincide
Cinder and cell
Cleaving from fire’s trunk
Its momentary prong of flame
A dense orthography
Where acicular and denticulate leaves
Fall onto the computer screen
Flooding it with countless hims
Versions, Visions
Viscous light bent around the splotch
Of his parti-bruised knee
Viscous light working
Drunk around
The sun-tight curve of each curl
Ripe light looking to
Thread vertebrae, sleeve muscle
The whole body swollen, grown
Monstrous in its bloom
He teems, light
Listens, I
Write to catch
Some reflected instance
Of world in word
As it falls away, remaining
Strangely full, I write
To describe some low hum of built him
By dint of its glow, its deep slow
And denticulate kindling

Chris Martin’s latest book of poetry, The Falling Down Dance, was published by Coffee House Press in November 2015. Support a poet and make the world a better place.