by Michelle DeRose
Tuck that baby in close. He needs
to hear your beats; you, to smell
his hair. Skin itching for touch,
building bonds by contact. Once,
an old man in a home pressed
palms to pane. His daughter prayed
along, her breath frosting the air.
Neighbors hung curtains on shared
lines, clasped amidst the plastic.
Twice in recent life they advised
no contact: to slow the spread
of a spiked virus and to wedge
between father and his newborn son
an unwarranted block of ice.
 |
Detained Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil (file photo above) was allowed to hold his one-month-old son for the first time Thursday after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to keep the father and infant separated by a plexiglass barrier. —NPR, May 22, 2025 |
Tuck that baby in close. He needs
to hear your beats; you, to smell
his hair. Skin itching for touch,
building bonds by contact. Once,
an old man in a home pressed
palms to pane. His daughter prayed
along, her breath frosting the air.
Neighbors hung curtains on shared
lines, clasped amidst the plastic.
Twice in recent life they advised
no contact: to slow the spread
of a spiked virus and to wedge
between father and his newborn son
an unwarranted block of ice.
Professor Emerita of English, Michelle DeRose lives and writes in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Find her most recent publications in ONE ART, Panoply, One Hundred Poems for Hearing Dogs (anthology), and The New Verse News.
