One of my favourite things about this poem is that it came to me in church, a place where the transcendent meets my nitty-gritty. I know that sounds strange, but it makes a lot of sense: church is where I cuddle and coo over other people's third/fourth/fifth child. It's my every-seventh-day reminder that I was going to have that many until, well, real life children happened to me and I realized surgery was inevitable, either a grafted-on third hand, or...
Vasectomy
is a safe and highly effective form
of border control, a virtually
painless pro-
hibition of my lifelong plan to
become
the Waltons, one snip
seals off vessels carrying sperm
from
your rotting gene pool to mine in
late-night
fluid movements, cutting the risk
of conceiving more
frightened rabbits than I have hands,
to ensure a severed
marriage is pulled in no more than two
directions, the area is frozen with
a prick
of remorse, and then tied or sealed
to prevent
culpability for knowingly creating
another autistic mouth to
concede, most men return to their
normal life-
style following this minimally
invasive form of permanent
hearth patrol.
"Vasectomy" first appeared in CV2.
