Jane Zwart
I hold myself in readiness
to lurch, furious and afraid,
from the rooms
where my children are not.
I do not want to use the word
foreseen for what
I have seen: panic, preamble,
car keys ransacked from
the predictable
drawer, a sedan backed
over a curb, the house left
gaping. I don’t
want to guess what curses
I’d call down on slow vans
or on toddlers
tugged from crosswalks.
And the curse of that other
son, whom gaming
didn’t train to aim low enough—
I am afraid of every verb in it.
Once my son
called my fearsome hold
a deathgrip. He was not wrong.
from the rooms
where my children are not.
I do not want to use the word
foreseen for what
I have seen: panic, preamble,
car keys ransacked from
the predictable
drawer, a sedan backed
over a curb, the house left
gaping. I don’t
want to guess what curses
I’d call down on slow vans
or on toddlers
tugged from crosswalks.
And the curse of that other
son, whom gaming
didn’t train to aim low enough—
I am afraid of every verb in it.
Once my son
called my fearsome hold
a deathgrip. He was not wrong.
Biography
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Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University, where she also co-directs the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, HAD, Threepenny Review, and TriQuarterly, as well as other journals and magazines.
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