man weeps in the presence of pumpkin guts

by Justin Hamm

october, after nightfall
he regards the way
the kitchen light
parachutes down
over the olive-green table
the way the silver knife
glimmers and everything
turns the washed out
color of surgery

he considers the roundish shell
scraped out and hollow
its flat oval seeds
so sterile when viewed
against the tangled strings
of the pastel
orange gutheaps

two feet away
these same seeds become
quaint life-giving details
squished adorably between
or dangling preciously from
the smallest goopy fingers
as his wife snaps
a dozen photographs

they conceived this child
on their first attempt
and believed they'd given
proper thanks
for the textbook pregnancy
for eight consecutive hours
of sleep each night
for the myriad of
tiny inside parts
that all operate just
as such parts should

and yet tonight
it is his sweet wife
who must knife out the face
with the wide toothy grin
before balling up
the sunday post-dispatch
fat and wet with waste
because it reminds him
too much of the one
who should have come after
the one who smiles shyly
in all the pretty pictures

Justin Hamm has appeared or is forthcoming in New York Quarterly, Cream City Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Red Rock Review, The Brooklyn Review, jmww, and a host of other publications.