The father is minus his left arm
must have come that way
this makes
everyday actions difficult
so he stays
propped up on the purple plastic easy chair
and we ignore him.
The babies are no more than pliable
rubber erasers with screwed-up squalling faces
battened down
with a few cottonball pillows
good enough for babies.
The mother does all the work while
the boy and girl follow her around
undoing it.
we have her say stuff in a prissy DAR voice,
stuff like I must wash the floor today
but then we toss her off the roof
or make her trip over furniture
so she never does
We know a hand must seem huge,
even to our son and daughter counterparts,
so sometimes we use the Godzilla imperative
to swoop down and terrorize.
It’s their fault for having a house with only
three sides, open to the elements.
Then the giant hand will descend and show
us where to move, settling each
where we belong, once and for all.