Oona is at the age where she has mastered phonics but doesn’t know the right way to spell so she writes words the way she hears them. “Thankful” as “Thankfool.” I know she will eventually have to learn the right way to spell, but how can I go back to “thankful” now that I’ve seen “thankfool”? I knew I was thankfool the moment I saw it . . . thankfool thankfool thankfool . . . Even as the apparatus I am typing into tries to correct my spelling, I am thankfool . . .
The poems “little astronaut,” “An Infant Reaches,” and “The Dishes” were performed by Mike Birbiglia in the Broadway production of The New One at the Cort Theatre, October 25, 2018–January 20, 2019. Thanks to Mike Birbiglia and Seth Barrish. Several poems from this collection appeared in Mike Birbiglia’s The New One: Painfully True Stories of a Reluctant Dad. Thanks to Gretchen Young and Grand Central Publishing. “To the Car Seat on My Bathroom Floor” first appeared in the New York Times thanks to Jessica Grosse. “Dancing, before you were born” will appear in Poem-A-Day and “The Foot” appeared in Ploughshares. Thanks to those publications and the Academy of American Poets and Ilya Kaminsky.
My gratitude to the generous life forms little astronaut has encountered in her six-year journey: Mike Birbiglia. These poems would be secret poems on my laptop if not for Mike Birbiglia. Rena Mosteirin, who read more versions than anyone, Ilya Kaminsky. People and places that let me perform early versions of poems: The Cherry Lane Theater in New York City, Flanny and Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles, Paul Muldoon’s Picnic at the Irish Arts Center, Judd Apatow, Pete Holmes, The Milk Carton Kids, Sondre Lerche. Moms who grabbed my kid while I finished this book—Jana Duda and Nancy Juvonen—and my own mom. My whole family. Mabel Lewis, Maria Garcia Teutsch, Sarah McEachern, Claire Keane, Paige Lewis, Victoria Labalme, Lewis Black, Derek DelGaudio, Chris Wink, Alan Zweibel, Adam Gopnik, Liz Allen, Jean Hanff Korelitz, John Mulaney, Ira Glass, Chris Crawford, Bella Lewis, and Bill Roberts. My cat, Mazzy Star Macaroni. My amazing editor, Allison Adler, and everyone at Andrews McMeel for making this book better and putting it into the world. The heroic Erin Malone who made this book possible. I am thankfool to all.
little astronaut is for Moe & O.