Fever

The baby fussed in his crib. The crib fussed into a fever. 
Fever dawned into morning. Fever broke into a day.

Paisley patterns adorned the day’s calamity-moist skin. 
The day broke into a dress. The day broke into

a photo of my grandmother in middle age, hiking 
her fever-black dress above her knees. O the sticky sugary

viscous drops of infant’s acetaminophen, crusting into fever. 
Morning toppled over. I pressed a 20-dollar bill into

my husband’s hand as he left for work. I pressed his hand 
into a fever. I pressed the morning into a clock.

The clock kept each hour from fevered morning. 
The baby coughed into my upper arm, his forehead scarlet

with fever, the fine hair at the base of his head 
curled and wet with paisley drops of sweat.

Nothing moved that I didn’t touch. The house hung 
as on a nail, perfectly still. From my head, fever sprang,

perfectly formed, and dressed as the Goddess of War. 
Each deer in the farm fields around the village fevered

the dirt for leftover corn. Fever thundered across 
the potholes on the two-lane highway heading out of town.

Whose woods these are I think I know, I whispered into 
my son’s hot ear, so that he might imagine snow

that could fall and soothe his fever. The alcove 
of the morning is a corner where love sits alone,

a finger in each ear, blocking the fever of noise that rushes 
through the disconnected telephone wires of this house.