Everything Smells Like Breast Milk (A Poem on Fatherhood)

My wife’s kisses smell like breast milk

The baby’s head smells like breast milk

The plants smell like breast milk

The cats smell like breast milk

The mailman smells like breast milk

The sidewalk and the stoplights and the streets and the birds

The reverend and the rabbi and the bums and the stoners
and the fresh air at the beach

Titty milk
Titty milk
Titty milk

My receipt for creamer smells like breast milk

The cop writing a ticket smells like breast milk

The cage fighter smells like breast milk

My typewriter smells like breast milk

This poem smells like breast milk

Titty milk
Titty milk
Titty milk

12 AM
2 AM
5 AM

I’ll shout it from the top of a mountain

down below to the U.P.

Where the woman I love pumps away

and waits for me

© 2016 Lee Kitzis

Cecilia

You came into this world
screaming
with the back hair
of a 50-year-old Greek man

The greatest day of my life
punctuating the worst 4 days of my life

exhausted
in love
I held you to my chest
I kissed your head
you ate some of my chest hair

and that was it
I was hooked

I would console your screams

I would wipe your ass

I would chase away the boys
or the girls

I would find your lost scrunchy

I would buy you all the pretty things

withdrawing cash
and not charging it to the card

a technique daddy learned
to conceal his junk food and
lottery ticket purchases
from mommy

and we’d stick
that silly pretty thing
way down deep
in the daddy/daughter secret vault

and catch a Cubs game

and you’d have your favorite players

and mine would be dead or managers

and it will be ours

the whole thing

and nobody else’s

© 2016 Lee Kitzis