FIRST BOOKS ISSUE Kathi Morrison-Taylor   HULA HOOP A kindergarten Saturn, she orbits the yard, fighting physics, arms raised skyward, chip tipped up, eyes shut like a gospel singer whose lyrics rest on the tip of grace. I guess it's about bones and balance. The body hoops with soul and smoothes its hips and ribcage into a limber pole. The planets hula around a muscular sun. Pink, orange, and green stripes spiral around my daughter. She's in outer space, too busy to recall how she learned to keep her circle circling around one steady center all her own. Susan Goldman ANGEL Color Woodcut, 20” x 20” Edition: unique  see more work by Susan Goldman   DIAGRAM OF THE FEMALE REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM, TRANSLATED Both parents born in El Salvador, the neighbor boy, Enrique, has trouble with his homework, knocks on our door, asking for my husband's bilingual expertise. At twelve, he must study the reproductive system in a special class called Health. He hands my husband a cross-section of a woman, a map with arrows and blanks. Shyly, he says his parents know only the Spanish words—tranquil in their living room, listening to the news under a wide-eyed portrait of Jesus, while their boy in the next apart- ment learns to pronounce clitoris, vagina, and uterine lining. What would Jesus do, faced with a worksheet like this? I find I need to leave the room so men can talk as men. My husband comes to consult me only when he is unsure about fallopian tubes. In a half an hour, they are almost done. Anatomically correct and American, the diagram is filled with terms doctors use. I can hear Enrique thanking my husband: Gracias, gracias, gracias, señor. His gratitude seems too great, as if he could know that when you learn a new word in no time you find it everywhere. SEA MONKEYS My daughter rips the foil packet and pours tenants into the tank— as directions say, INSTANT PETS. Eggs like pearly dandruff hatch into jiggling specks. On the package a cartoon brine shrimp winks. They grow, endear themselves to my child. Daily, she aerates the tank— pours greenish water from glass to glass— provides powdered algae clumped smaller than mustard seed. Little water chimps agitate for breakfast at the surface, so human in their neediness and spunk, they earn the playful name we offer: Sea Monkeys. What if, magnified, we too might invite analogy? Something generous, far cuter than our small, mean selves? PLAYING OUR BIRTHDAYS Not because he loved her, but because of habit, Mom would say. When years after the divorce he played her birthday, mine, and his for the jackpot. He held on to what he felt was luck long after she packed her bags and left him. Even their anniversary splashed its date onto losing tickets that he never threw away, dozens discovered in old sports coats' pockets. As if their man-and-wife collision could mean nothing less than a ridiculous fortune, three-in-one destined for fame. As if some rational good should finally come of the days, months, and years that dropped us here together, and left us, once knotted in dismay, slowly working apart. ON HERITAGE NIGHT AT MY CHILDREN'S ELEMENTARY SCHOOL I show up with brownies, nothing exotic or ethnic or spicy, no soul food, fried rice, or plantains. In a Betty Crocker pyramid, I display my dark, sugary fix awkwardly, pretending a wholesome, American heritage, while inside, I am the dilute white of my father's alcoholic amnesia, a translucent fog as homogenous as a mild cold. I show up with brownies out of a box, whisked with oil, eggs, and water, the color of brandy in his morning coffee, dense and slightly under-baked. I set them on a table in the gym wondering what others will think of me, wondering what I think of them. In an addict's kingdom that's how you think, sizing up others, who like you, may hear heritage and know Jack Daniels, gin, or a six-pack could as easily appear as this array of international casseroles. In a United Nations' stew of young families, screw my historic English, Swedish, Scottish, French blood lines. Our parents teach us what to do, or not to do, in my case.   Kathi Morrison-Taylor was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. She completed her MFA at the University of Washington in 1989 and since then has lived in California, Connecticut, and Virginia. Her poems have appeared in Southern Poetry Review, Stand, Seattle Review, and New York Quarterly. Co-director of the Joaquin Miller Cabin Reading Series in Washington, DC, she has worked both as a teacher and librarian. She and her husband and two children make their home in Arlington, VA. The poems here are reprinted from By the Nest, published by The Word Works, Inc., with permission from the author. For more information on the book, see: http://www.wordworksdc.com/.   Published in Volume 10:2, Spring 2009. Read more by this author: Kathi Morrison-Taylor: DC Places Issue Morrison-Taylor on Joaquin Miller: Forebears Issue