When my nephew pudges with his saggy pumpkin
face, and I think maybe it’s his mouth he’s got
around some gewgaw from the floor, I want
to pry his trap open, but he won’t budge. It’s
like his lips are sewn shut in some horror-flick
affliction, which is so freaking cute I wish I could
Cookie Monster his whole head. He gets it
from our side, his mouth almighty, for we Pardlo men
have been known to show less sense than appetite.
Pop claimed I used to hum in protest the final bars
of the “Marseillaise,” or at least that’s what he
heard when, attacked by “dragonflies,” as he
called it, as in that boy got the dragonflies—
the kind fictive as the bogeyman, needles stitching
shut the pieholes of chatterboxes and tattletales,
having mesmerized the brats like flying spoons
of tapioca—I used to zip it…
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The New Yorker (Digital) - 1 Issue, January 22, 2024