By Elizabeth Bastos

To no obvious effect are you turned over
and over in the Disney, run-through

with marshmallows,
or pleased with the freezer's production.

Blank-eyed, you write Zagat
of the musical bath toys' "joyless service,"

"the hole in the wall remains dirty,"
and "greatly missed is the usual absence."

Your single adult-tooth
is tuned like radio to despair. O, my wailing

is amplified
by waves of returning car lights that are not your mother's car.