Baby, It’s Cold Out There
by Thom Donovan
Composed December 2014
The baby named Miracle
Died the other night
Olivia survived for weeks on a ventilator and
Now is being discharged
The nurses call everyone daddy and mommy
And so we are leveled
The classes, the races
I am thinking about Miracle
A 24-weeker, her parents
Are so young, 15 I’m told
The dad still playing video games
The green-dyed hair of the mother
Olivia’s dad tells us he had lost his faith in God
But now it is restored
Daddy, mommy, grandma, grandpa
We are a family for however long
Class and race will be restored soon enough
When normalcy resumes
The doctors say only what they have to
When forgetting to breathe is normal
Breathing and eating in tandem
Is one of the most difficult things for a preemie
We wash our hands and sanitize them until they bleed
An artificial world designed for respiration and warmth
For combatting jaundice
It is Christmas and we are making cards together
One of the planned activities of the hospital’s social worker staff
And Olivia’s mother writes on her baby’s card
“Baby, it’s cold out there”
All the while I have been planning to teach
A course on “the poetics of disability,” thinking
About how to approach ableism, yet also thinking
Whether she will be blind, or developmentally delayed, or with cerebral palsy
It is so fucked-up
I want to give her everything
When I shudder to think what this would entail
One nurse is telling me to get her into a charter school,
That we should apply within months of her discharge;
The advice begins about Roth IRAs and school districting
And day care.
Thom Donovan is the author of numerous books, including Withdrawn (Compline, 2017), The Hole (Displaced Press, 2012) and Withdrawn: a Discourse (Shifter, 2016). He co-edits and publishes ON Contemporary Practice. He is also the editor of Occupy Poetics (Essay Press, 2015); To Look At The Sea Is To Become What One Is: an Etel Adnan Reader (with Brandon Shimoda; Nightboat Books, 2014), Supple Science: a Robert Kocik Primer (with Michael Cross; ON Contemporary Practice, 2013), and Wild Horses Of Fire. His current projects include a book of poems and other writings based upon the compositions of Julius Eastman, a book of critical essays regarding poetics, political practice, and the occult, and an ongoing "ante-memoir" entitled Left Melancholy.
