I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.

it was the first time I'd
realized
that.

the long married man and woman nightly swallow string from the same ball of yarn.  the man is pleased to have recently weaned himself from flashing the public by way of privately showing his tongue to the aquarium pets left alive.  the woman is pleased to exist as god’s only means of communication with her husband.  the two keep to themselves until everyone in the world is crying and then share a moment with their talented baby.

you don’t want to buy a bunny but you’ve already told your ex-wife you’re doing fine and now she’s requested a photo of something you love.  pet stores make you claustrophobic and you wonder if this is the same everywhere.  you decide to borrow your neighbor’s good camera but when you get to his door you hear him mowing your lawn.  a car going too fast makes to turn around in his driveway but blows a tire on the curb, backs up, and continues on its much sadder way.  you’ve seen your neighbor’s adult daughter without a shirt but at the time your dad was in the hospital and it was the beginning of not being turned on.  you don’t remember who but some odd duck sent him a snowglobe instead of flowers.

your father says pets are for decoration.  my father says pets are for storage.  your father has a boat.  my father has a boat called the buddhist window.  our fathers go boating.  our mothers have in common the land of two left feet.  your brother doesn’t speak when he’s writing ace dialogue.  my brother doesn’t speak because of a brain disorder.  our doctor has good news and bad news.  you have a top bunk, I have a bottom.  our god is not real.  you say he has a sense of wonder.  I say he healed too quickly.  your legs give me sea legs.  our mothers balloon

and dot the horizon.

I am looking for the man whose life flashed before my eyes.  I am writing as my father.  we don’t love god.  we cure him.  after brushing away the bubbles of a bath so perfect I am horrified at the baldness of your baby brother.  it’s everywhere.  you shrug and keep at your ear of corn as if it’s about to set itself on fire.  you are the same way with *****.  these are your words.  when I’m angry I can feel my hair growing.  when I’m angry I cut it.  I write for women.  it is like the glittering peacefulness of a snowglobe you drained as a boy to water a toy soldier’s horse.  this quiet doesn’t need a white male, but it helps.

it’s a nice enough baby with an inability to emit.  the adult world worries but no more than than it does for the television’s volume during bouts of ceasefire.  parents divorce or parents agree on the same support group.  siblings form a circle around a one trick pony.  some believe the jack-in-the-box is broken while others believe it’s patient.

a father’s brain activity
charts its course.

piano hands
thrum
on the hood
of a junkyard
car.

I am hard to look at
because I thought my head
a burn box.

the sound of a microwave
has a short time
to spend
with the blue
puppy’s
whine.

the theatrics
need a mother.

a mother needs
to populate
or to paint
a factory.

we are less and less particular
about the nowhere we come out of.

mother, factory.

god’s
untouchable
childhood.

for Aidan, Noah, Mary Ann*

The boy lived in a town by himself.  Because he didn’t know his own name, he did not name the town.  The town had one street that circled the town and there were no houses or buildings.  The boy was never hungry, and if he was, he’d never been hungry enough to know it.  He was thirsty often and because he’d had a dream about his body being full of water he’d spit in his hand and open his hand to the sun when the sun was out and then drink the warm spit.  He was not afraid to leave the town but still he did not leave it.  Perhaps he was its bravery.