Elegy for the Footie Pajamas

No snap between your legs,
for months. But how? When did I last
gnaw sausages cased in terry cloth?
When did I last un-snap-snap-snap?
I’ve gone to the door and I’ve shouted.
I am missing some-ping. Hey, you,
in your big-girl PJs, don’t you have
a little sister? You’re giant,
lying down, dreaming of beanstalks.
I have no cows for you to sell. Not now.
What is Mommy doing? I am reading
in a disco. No, it’s not a disco,
it’s my office with your finger on the switch.
Two years lived under a strobe light--
when I look up, you’re there
then there and there. When I look up,
you’ve nailed the cha-cha, the fox trot.
What happened in the in-between?
What is Mommy reading?
A book with pages torn out
by Kenny Mullins in grade four.
Kenny Mullins why do you do that I said
he said Because you’re fat.
Twenty years later in Starbucks
Kenny Mullins says Sorry about the book
it was a joke! He says Don’t put me in a poem!
He says Ha Ha Ha! Now he’s fat, and also bald.
Oh, yes, now I say Ha Ha Ha.
I don’t like myself like this. I am leaving
some-ping out. Like me. Do you? Tomorrow
you’ll ask for the keys. Answer’s No.
Buttering me up, you say, Let’s play,
Mommy, I be the snake, you be the dark.
Fast child of a fast mother,
it’s been years but I haven’t forgotten
being the dark. It comes right back. It’s like
pushing someone off a training bike.

*Beth Ann Fennelly, a 2003 NEA recipient, is the author of two books of poems, OPEN HOUSE, whch won the 2002 Kenyon
Review Prize and was a BookSense 76 Top Ten Poetry Pick, and TENDER HOOKS, published by W. W. Norton in 2004. She is an Asst. Prof. of English at the University of MS.