Cameron Morse

buy buy BABY

1
I dip my finger in a smudge
of rainwater on the tin metal armrest.
The terrible twos and teardrops
dangle from cheek pudges. He wants
to hold the empty bottle of lotion
so bad he wails on the stairs
leading toward oatmeal slopped in milk
and apple bits. Yesterday he threw
his first public tantrum
Harnessed in my arms outside buy buy BABY.
I hadn’t bought the Ride Around Racer.

2
Another day, another inquisition,
but I know better now than to leave my wife
alone with her anger. It’s a fireiron
that cools the closer you close you hand.
Sure it burns but it will soon
be extinguished. Besides, there’s a kind
of catharsis in self-prosecution and realizing
what an asshole I’ve been
late morning in July: Polar bears of cumulus
clamber bright dirty white underbellies
overhead after night rain
and I breathe deep from Arctic springs.

Cameron Morse lives with his wife Lili and son Theodore in Blue Springs, Missouri. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. Subsequent collections are Father Me Again  (Spartan Press, 2018), Coming Home with Cancer (Blue Lyra Press, 2019) and Terminal Destination (Spartan Press, 2019).