Blooding
Tartan skirt hitched up
above my hips;
thong rolled down around my calves
like cuffs, I sit pins apart.
My naked toddler airplanes in
through the open door.
Curious, she stops
and listens to my cataract.
She gurgles and grins
and I smile.
I stand up, wipe, and drop
the paper in the bowl. I flush.
I hold a finger out to show her
then I kneel
and dab it on her face:
left cheek, right cheek, button nose.
The metal twists
my daughter’s lip.
Patrick Chapman is the author of eight books, the latest being A Promiscuity of Spines: New & Selected Poems (Salmon, 2012) and The Negative Cutter (novellas, Arlen House, 2014). He has written several episodes for children’s TV shows Garth & Bev, Wildernuts, and Bubble Bath Bay. Burning the Bed (2003), his award-winning short film, starred Gina McKee and Aidan Gillen. For Big Finish Productions, he wrote the Doctor Who audio adventure Fear of the Daleks (2007). Chapman is a producer on B7 Productions’ 2014 adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles for BBC Radio 4, starring Derek Jacobi and Hayley Atwell. With Dimitra Xidous he founded the online poetry magazine The Pickled Body. Twice a finalist in the Hennessy Awards, he is also a Pushcart nominee.