Each child was taken from their mother and given two surrogates.

One. An iron mesh held milk and food. The babies raised were healthier than real-monkey-mother-reared infants.

Two. A block of wood, covered with sponge rubber, and sheathed in tan cotton terry cloth, with a light bulb behind her that radiated heat. The result was a mother, soft, warm, and quiet.

A baby macaque monkey will choose the surrogate lacking milk,

rather than the wire mesh mother that feeds them, eternal.

Back when the winter months came,   

you worried if there was enough time to write

seven hundred invitations.

So you took the wings you made

You were flapping, flying, finally stopping

at a fully fabric nation.

Woolen buildings, silken names.

You became the newest royal gardener,

And at the castle’s foundation,

You found wires, iron-laid.

You pulled them out, weed by leaf by rusty flesh

to perform an operation.

Took the fabric earth and rain

And built a tan cotton terry cloth mother

A new form of imitation.

Enough, insists the iron mother. And she took the food from her wire mesh cage and presented it to you. You needed to eat but first you were to pull out the fabric from your mouth. Fabric teeth, fabric tongue, fabric throat.

You went to your bed and your wire mother flicked the lights off, leaving an iron scratch on the switch. Here was the parent you sewed, torn apart by the stitches. You fell asleep in your blanket, fabric hands, fabric hair, fabric heart.