Christian Wessels
Frog Lesson
Any less than full leads to interrupted sleep
But when she woke up every twenty minutes
I couldn’t understand why, assuming a sort of emotional
Rupture happened that day, a breakthrough
*
In her first experience of anger, sadness, any feeling
That lingers. Do you remember your first loneliness?—
Hearing the inflections through a wall from two people
Not arguing or agreeing but speaking through a subject
*
Like apples, numbers, frogs—though without language yet
You wouldn’t have known. Do you remember
The way your sadness transformed into an irreversible
Temperament, an attitude towards numbers,
*
Apples, frogs? When Tanja came home from work to us
Both crying, unable to communicate
Except through interruptions, she asked
Did you try to feed her again? Maybe she needs more food.
*
To overlook hunger, to psychologize her four-month-old
Experience in afternoons and nights extending
Forever, permanently changing her sense of feeling,
I was too embarrassed to admit I really should have stopped
*
Thinking, but if I apologized to her, she wouldn’t understand
The words. If I kissed her stomach, massaged her feet
Or sang, she would have laughed at me. Her memory
Lasts one second, her memory lasts forever.
*
Six ounces of water, three scoops of formula powder.
Seven ounces of water, three and a half.
Prunes for three days, carrots for three days, apples for
Three days. She will sleep until she’s awake.
Christian Wessels reads “Frog Lesson”
Christian Wessels is a poet and critic. His poems have appeared in The Cortland Review, The Yale Review, and Harvard Review Online, among other journals. His criticism has or will soon appear in Literary Imagination, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Cleveland Review of Books. He received his PhD in English from the University of Rochester, where he currently teaches, and his MFA from Boston University. He splits his time between New York and the Black Forest, Germany.