Before you have kids, you get a dog.
Then when you get a baby, you wait for the dog to die.
When the dog dies,
it's a relief.

When your babies aren't babies, you want a dog again.

The uses of the body,
you see where they end.

But we are only in the middle,
only mid-way.

The organs growing older in their plush pockets ticking toward the wearing out.

We are here and soon won't be
(despite the cozy bed stuffed dog pillows books clock).

The boy with his socks on and pajamas.
A series of accidental collisions.

Pressure in the chest. Everyone breathing for now, in and out, all night.

These sad things, they have to be.
I go into the kitchen thinking to sweeten myself.

Boiled eggs won't do a thing.
Oysters. Lysol. Peanut butter. Gin.

Big babyface, getting fed.
I am twenty. I am thirty. I am forty years old.

A friend said Listen,
you have to try to calm down.


About this poem
"This poem is an excerpt from my third book, 'The Uses of the Body.' Linked lyric sequences comprise the collection-which takes the unruly, wayward body as its central preoccupation, and considers the pleasures and complexities of marriage and domestic life."
-Deborah Landau

About Deborah Landau
Deborah Landau is the author of three books of poems, including "The Uses of the Body" (Copper Canyon Press, 2015). She teaches in and directs the creative writing program at New York University and lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2015 Deborah Landau. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate