My DNA Winds My Son into A Frenzy

Neither I nor my son can answer what is nine times seven

without deep thought. The pistons that fire off facts fail

with numbers, our brains a blank ticker tape chugging along

helplessly. I watch him at the table, after the dinner dishes

have been cleared, head bent over a paper marked with Xs

and Ys. The problem refuses to compute and the same temper

that stomps my foot snaps his pencil in two and the white

worksheet scratched with his crisscross scrawl combusts

into confetti and rains down upon us as a snow globe shaken

too hard. Later, I’ll sweep up scraps of his homework from

the kitchen corners and out from beneath the chairs but for now

I stare, unsure how to solve any of the equations before me:

not the math, not my son, not my rage, completely undone.