[in this life another is you]
father paints an abstract jesus. my sister bites at the shoulder strap of her bra. my brothers
to keep from crumbling
are sharing
bread.
-
I draw a violinist. a dog
at the neck of its owner.
-
in our imaginings
gutted baseballs
became
the skulls of small animals
through which
the wind
called heads.
-
in heaven’s garage
they’ve yet
to make
a horn
that works.
the kids have gone two or three years now without being raised.
the match
unlit
by your tooth
is paradise.
-
a refrigerator rocks in a junkyard.
either the door has jammed, or she
is pregnant.
-
a cement wall
scraped
in passing
by one
with a stick
is the love
we have
for father
-
depression is a dog whistle. I miss dinner sounding it out.
-
(when a scar of thunder / outs itself / I am blue)
or bluish
(like a sock in a blue
coat’s
pocket)
-
it is cruel to hang anything above a baby’s crib
-
I can only guess
I was happy
in the womb
with how
my mother
looked
-
the bunk
above mine
I call
deathbed
is
my brother’s-
he has
his own
way
of thinking
showerhead
is spotlight
-
here is a test: circle
the parts
of a circle
(a sameness)
in the parrots
we care for…
our suicides
fight
for position
-
in the apple
air
of hem
and haw
a pacing
uncle
blank
as a broom
regards
the *******
half
of a doorknob
or
two men
carry a ladder
past a cemetery
one thought
between them
-
this nonfiction
not
what you’d
imagined
-
mother an artifact of paranoia
-
paper
scissors
milk
-
blacktop
pools
at the neck
of a crow.
half eaten
children
limp
home.
an umbrella. a bra. a harp.
a street we call satan.
-
water, make your fist. hold your breath
in a single
fish.
-
delirious
when the lights
went out
mother
would pull cocoons
from the oven
tell us
to stop
kicking
-
it was a very strong soap
she’d use
a soap that squealed
against
the skin
her heart
a hiccup’s
echo
her eyesight the sound of a drill
her eyes
two holes
in a turtle’s
shell
her eyes for seeing
the food in her mouth
-
the sobbing ventriloquist was my idea. mother and father they were taking turns moving shampoo through my hair as I hummed. doom was a color. a mare kneeling on a bed of maroon straw. miles off, an ambulance driver entered a silent film and tried to buy a garage door opener.
-
children from abusive studio apartments inherit warehouse jobs from problem immigrants. a bruise of ***** darkens the front of your jeans. I am mugged in your dream and mugged in mine and mugged by a woman in both. for now, this field. my gestural father holding a broom for what he calls the welcome mat
of exodus. in memory alone I am alone.
-
under crow
and flat
on my back
in the loft
of my uncle’s
barn
my shadow
is still
she
who upright
confessed
so loudly
that her heart
flew
into a quiet
sky
as she
collapsed
-
on television
the world’s smallest ghost town. on a shadow
socks match
-
no longer graveyards, I tend what is everywhere resting. I crawl like a toothache, long with her death. the voices move from head to mouth.
a squirrel on fire. an act of god.
I don’t think seeing such things is enough to put
vague
& crow
into one bed. she is asleep
or fingered
by a man
with seven.
-
in a country store
a barefoot girl
walks on her heels-
long stride and baby.
the store’s owner
happily shelves
popcorn, gauze
the thought of his father
doing nothing.
-
beating my clothes
with me
in them
mother
irons
a man
from the moon
(who giggles in us poorly)
for love
-
if my father admits in his bed that some mice are alive when he bends
to the earth
a cornstalk
and lets
fly,
I have to find the mouse
that means
other mice.
-
wish I could dream away the bad mornings spent cheating on her sadness
-
illness, assault.
presence
a blank
petition
-
in the end my mother was mostly an ocean dipped into by lightning.
a mother whose hands were broken by recent events. events that evoke transcription.
-
assault:
maid
loses cart
to stairwell
-
illness:
a birthmark, a scar, and a tattoo
eating under
a blanket
~
[hospital young]
years back I met god in some nowhere town before I was born to teach symbolism. I know what room I’m in by the tv show my mother’s watching. dear ghost, I hope you like the parrot. from what word did letter come. existence mourns non. grieve on sight.
~
[untitled]
fog overtakes toad
& boys
are born.
ghost yoga. crucifixion.
train is a tunnel
train’s never
seen.
two dead crows- I’m shoeless again.
~
[food (xiii)]
while pacing the hallway of a floor that elevators skip, an amateur eulogist pictures an error-prone barber in a bath of milk who gave as a gift a rocking horse with a bad stomach to a child healing a cobweb for a starless bear.
~
[untitled]
after seeing the girl I have a crush on sign my friend’s arm cast, I spend the weekend jumping out of a tree, trying to land on my left, in the backyard of the last person who knew to hide the head of god. I break nothing but the blood from my nose could fill a football. vandalism starts in the face. it’s dark. I treat my mouth like a scratch.
~
[notes for insect]
I will never know a ghost story
god does not