DECISIONS

Having a child or having an affair
inverts the equation: what’s had, mister,

is you. After test-tube tests prove you’re good
to go, possibility winks its skirt

where the rubber meets the road. A buck
fifteen an hour, plastic accepted, converts

fantasy into soul food: If I dressed
her up myself that’s what she’d be wearing.

What’s your e-mail? asks the working girl. No,
no. What are you exactly doing? Your

getting-worried wife might call and call
but hotel voicemail distances her voice

on a laid-back microchip. Said wife made you: pampered
your ambitions, convinced you your receding

hairline doesn’t count, cooked operatic
Italian, but still this scene: flung blouse

draping the lamp, mini-bar plundered, plush
robe swaddling the new babe. Her Opium

scent’s on your plane ticket home, your future,
your child, this infancy of your desire.