Dear Ethel Cain

Mom cracks an egg and says she is no longer holding onto the fingerprint of god. My brothers look at me as if they know how to erase my eyes. There is a problem in this poem that only a poem can solve. Death is death because it couldn’t sleep in heaven. Stones here are thrown because a stone can’t eat more than one bird. We listen to our fathers argue over whether or not ghosts are angels that are sexually active. Then to the same tooth for nine months. By the time we’re assaulted, we’ve not been uniquely suicidal. Echoes learn the wrong language.

If there is
no god
I hope
there’s not

One is born
with one’s
own language

The turtle dreams of strangulation in a green emptiness

A star is the graverobber of god

I texted the writers not all of them

Writing is sometimes being drunk while putting a mouse back together in a mountain

We can kiss here
is an eyepatch
for your moon
tattoo

I don’t know why anyone would want to see anything

What if his son
stayed put

I am not going to tell you the name of the movie but 1983 I thought my mom was asleep and she thought I and our closeness got near enough to be seen watching the wrong ****** put a lookalike in the right life anyway the past like your body is always new and before the eclipse I pressed a bottlecap into your thigh

you will never
know
what this
is about
but sing
**** all
to your double

What if I am close to knowing
why
I have brothers

Life is the line drawn between death and death

Once I’ve seen your body I look at your body

Shape is the shape I must become to receive the world. There is no bomb called grief. No bomb child. The bells were rung I held my son. You can love your brothers forever. Thunder misgenders echo no more than once. Oh no Ohio forgiveness forgave forgiveness. What if you can’t stop writing this poem. My mother and father have the same password. Sometimes when I’m touching you I’m not. Touch tombstone for the mourning cosmos.

It hurt
Being made fun of
In the bathroom
That way
I got myself
Back to class
A whale
Shrinking the ocean
With sleep

Last night I told my wife
There were little hands
Tugging
On my jeans

Small enough to die
Please
Pleaser