it speaks of me

the past

like I’m
not here

15% off all print books and free mail shipping at Lulu today with coupon code of MAYMAIL15

~

some poems:

~

[raise god]

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.

[taunts]

death is never early. take the first bite of every meal in front of a mirror. chase the kid while pulling a plastic bag over your head. invent a sibling schoolmates blind. know poverty, know moon. shampoo the elderly from a distance. baby no one. they have looked like hell since before you were born.

[pathos]

our fighting
determines
which of us
is more
sonsick.  

relic child, town crier.

I take what I’m given, beating.

cerecloth, snow
on snow
before and after

it buries.

me of course
as I position
myself
to hum

above
a basket.

me as I marry homeward
and kick

ball, stone, stiff
bird

stiff bird in death
doubling as
the rat
of an angel

yes
kick
for reasons known
to another’s

pet cobra

skin to skin
in an unmarked
life.

[costume]

we’re here to ****** the head of the boy who put a clown’s red nose on the girl playing jesus for stopped traffic. if I spoke your language, I would tell you.

[poor lighting]

a plastic doll with a human right hand distracts us from the parrot’s empty cage. we have been writing in unison instead of eating. our poverty is so advanced it keeps a fake diary and a real diary but hides them in the same spot. we are dying in two of our mother’s arms. our mother is elsewhere repeating after the man who does our stunts.

[collapse]

how
on a clear day  
my father
is the face
of absence.

how what I mean
cuts the finger

my mother
sips.

how porch blood
is not the same blood
the body
faints with.

how copperhead, how rattlesnake, how lisp

says I myth
my sister
who is still

vanishing
to shoplift
god

from the thunderstorm
we gave her.

[southern treehouse]

as my sister
inspects
her *******
in the white
piece of paper
we both
refer to
as the one
and only
ghost
mirror

I fry
god’s egg
in the plastic
shovel
I took
from a sandbox
shaped
like a coffin

and shiver
like the psychic
who with
the controllable
sobbing
of her hands
gave our seizures

to animals

[bait]

I didn’t see it
like some kids
saw it-

pain
as clay.

a swat here or there
to the back
of a mother’s
mind.

a man who took a bowling ball
into a closed garage
had no sadness
I could pray
over.

...Santa smoked on the roof
of my father’s house
while I
with a noiseless
stomach

touched
that hunger.

[how to live in the country dark]

toss frogs
into a fire
your father made.

find a woman
who’s abandoned herself
to being led
by a stick

let her blind mongrel
lick your palm.

bury a handful
of gravel
call it
the moon’s
grave.

hide in houses
hidden
from road.

make at least one friend
whose night vision
is a glass of milk.

double your body
by walking
drunk.

[outside the body it is always procession]

I may have lied about being pregnant but I know my ******* kid.

her father quells *******.

ants are quiet.

-

his teeth make sense.

our yell is I’m gonna shoot you in the blood.

-

elsewhere
is a light dusting
of downfall.  sleepily

legal

are the sunbathing sad.

[crown]

i.

a hand towel
over the lid
of any
stubborn
jar-

a mother to a father
or less frequently
a father to a mother
I don’t know why this is
but either way
a gentle admittance

to couple

as if passing beneath
the singing voice
of statue…

ii.

that stage
where a baby
is all
head

[mendicant]

this doorbell
is for the inside
of your house

-

to some
you’re the giant
you’re not

-

hearing isn’t for everyone  

-

a fog-softened man
with a baby
might experience
a sense
of boat
loss…

-

hurt

what you know

[crystal]

a foster boy using an alias teaches my son to shoot.

it’s the tooth fairy on a sad day finds
under my pillow
a handgun.

you know your father
is a night owl.

[dog years]

the longer
I grieve

the more

~

below is an unpublished companion piece {shuteye in the land of the sacred commoner} to my recent chapbook, infant*cinema (**** Press, April 2016)  

as such:

~~~~~

[shut-eye in the land of the sacred commoner]

~
poetry and god share the same quick death.

I’m on what you’re on;
the eighth day of the world.



~
it’s all in your head.  the newborn we had on a mountaintop.  the word it knew from memory.  its hand that stuck to everything but the dog our dog ate.  the cold our dog died from.  the tent we called aquarium. that we filled with diapers.  that was never full.



~
existence is the wrong inquiry.  

I was destroyed by an angel

for having
taste buds.  

/ a pinkness

went on
without me.



~
if touch is all it can manage

the hand is poor.

I am the new face
of baby
doorstep.

when lightning
has emptiness
to burn

feed
the fasting
doll.



~
I am old and nothing brings me joy.

I did
good things
but I
was asked.

drunk
outside
of a dog
shelter
I am likely
to remember
a library
pyros
love.

my uncle
he is probably
still
west of me
able

to open
a bottle
with the mouth
of a living
frog.



~
and what
would forgiveness
do?  

my kids were never born.  yours
they hide
from the number
of people
god
made.

when dead, I was not
a bird
yet
my mother
asks
what kind.

I can’t tell
by looking
if he’s seen
the future
or seen
the future
again.  I strip

when my stomach
hurts.



~
it puts me on my stomach

this grief
you have
for the switched
at death

-

god’s color has returned

-

the male
animals
in the grey
barn

knew

-

first



~
I want to say it is yes yes

puberty’s
painted
egg, the island

clock, the genitalia

of alarm…

I want to say it is orange

like bees
like
not all

the hymns
not all

condoms…



~
he says we are men
not because a raccoon
chased a bone
into the factory
of shadows.

he says it’s me
or the bag
of trash
and gives me
a knife.

he says before I was borned
we took
the same
bullet.  he says mouth.

I kick
he says
in my sleep
and it puts
a belly button
on a bird
one
bird.

he says them animals
ain’t so wild
as a dog
in drag

and your mother
is the outside
world.



~
the robot is a ******.

the baby
it goes
from baby
to baby
with no
message.

-

I want your work to matter.



~
subtitles, ghost
pollen / I sit

facing
my father

he strokes
a large
bumblebee…



~
eating behind the mirror’s back
it was all
hick lore
to me

a scratch
in scar’s
nakedness, a loss

of infancy
awarded
only
to the deaf
who dug up
the ears
of god
for nothing
more
than the sound

of depression
going blind
in the garden
of the hairdresser’s

hair



~
death
my way
of saying
goodbye
to god

-

had you lived
or enjoyed
amnesia...



~
when asked
I say
I see
on the floor
of a mudhut
a *** toy
having
a seizure.

I kiss the feet
you’re the future
of.



~
not
for devouring
the mannequin
but for eating
the seeds, it was

(in a coloring
  book
  for cigarettes)

beaten

by a baby
a baby
could love



~
I go with dove to high

dives / I am on

the pill
the swimmer’s
pill / for nine

months
I’ve hidden
a rabbit
from no one’s

hormonal
christ



~
it was for healing the hand of the plain hand
that I
was touched / well blood

on a bread
crumb
massage me
a brainwashed
worm / well comb

all you want
the eyesight
of god / swallow

a hair
in the house
birth
built…

-

can’t
this once
a thing
die
in the sanctuary
of its double




~
hell is a book.

she reads it
in a room
that’s alive.

attic or no, I want
to miss
my father.



~
nakedness,

give it time
to recover



~
into something from his childhood
a man
is born.  never

far off
what crawls
her way.



~
she reaches into the same hat for the rabbit he’s made disappear.

I sleep and the dark takes me for the bone

lightning
straightens.



~
church of intermission.  church of the rolled-away church my fever follows.  church of it ain’t a baby until it spits.  church of the lawnmower left running.  of the space you give the grieving horse.  church of you when you die in my sleep.  of musical suicides.  church of the disinfected high chair.  of the false bruise.  of how to become a balloon in the church of touch.



~
in the library’s dream, the abortion clinic is no bigger than a fingerprint.



~
this is me
praying
for a photo
of my father’s
last meal.

me

praying
to have
the allergic
reaction
my mother
faked.

for proof
of animal
suicide.

a mirror for my toys.  dirt for my brother.



~
and we touch to abridge doom in the bed of a headless man.  and we struggle to hear a father verbatim.  and we ask in a fierce wind a phone booth to please be a fireplace.  and a starfish consoles a handprint.



~
/ I was spotted covering my eyes by a dentist whose childhood had stopped disappearing.  how big is your family and who wears the mouth?  is it true your dad sold to a city gargoyle a spray-can of ****?  that your mom had no baby tired of being born?  that their suicides filled a madhouse with cubist maids?  

/ year nine:  your birthday spider is put on film for biting.  your sister takes one look at my brain and remembers what to feed and how to clean a cricket.

/ year eight:



~
my son doesn’t want the circle he’s drawing to touch the circle he’s drawing.

the dog
is a heartbroken
wolf.



~
she checks her teeth in the door glass of the oven.

the egg is dropped
and the owl
******.



~
when
did your caterpillar
become
a syringe?

I want to hide the clothes I’m wearing.

something touched
is something
mourned.



~
the woman had the suicidal absence of a man who’d just broken to his body that his blood was not the rooster patience devoured. if I peeled a potato, I did so in egg’s hell.



~
praise headgear, worship eyewear.

adore nostalgia, forgive

memorial’s
constant
vigil.

say god
three times, then

say mirror.



~
this is what you mean, kiddo

what you mean
to a bomb

/ it doesn’t help god

that god
is awake



~
for what
does the torso
pray?

the cocoon is music
to the mannequin’s
ear.

sister
she ain’t
been calm.



~
when grief
was password
and not
codename

when gift
horse
was horse
fly

when baby
little baby
shorthand
went all
stork-****

(on who)

to remember
god



~
outside the dream, I had written the most heartbreakingly clear poem about brotherhood.  inside

was this boy
was discovering
god’s thumb
is never
clean.  a boy whose mouth

was never
here.  all those I’ve met

I’ve left
alone.



~
asleep in the pickpocket’s bed, the baby is a mirage.  

I’m so fat
I’m fat
in the dark.  I compose

at my lowest
a crucifixion
story

from the basements
my father
wired.



~
putting the meat
back together
in an unfilled
pool

we yawned
at the same
time / brief

painless
the unmothered

between



~
as overcome as I was to be gifted a hospital gown, I had nothing on the angel whose brain / for visiting the eye / was banished…

we are the dead
we’re here
to return



~
by death I mean nothing was beautiful for a very long time.

that, and when did you know.

you’re not beautiful.  night

makes a mean
eyeball
soup.  

hell is a chicken-scratch.

ask not, spit not

the low
milk
of absence.

see red for crow.

the robotic jaw
lifting otherness
from a hole
in a body cast

no litter
of bewitched
kittens, no wild

crop
of soundlings
angry

at the wrong
life

I made
for a toy
car
a movie
screen

from a sheet
of aluminum
foil...

/ mother worked herself out of a straitjacket

she wanted
to paint

/ my stone-faced brother
had just been born
to mark
the cessation
of all

thunder

the singlemost mother has heard of a skin cream can turn one into darkness.  

a bar of soap that reads palms…

-

on display for the poker face of birth, you are the vision footage dies for.

-

you have this father
leaves
no stone
unseen

this brother

haunted
by surplus
aftermath…

-

before it was an ear, it was where

she scrubbed

memory
of god
make
no bones…

I thought
water
slept

/ a pair of handcuffs
from the mermaid’s
dream

this black tooth

my time
as a ghost

use a straw, hatchling

/ my behavior
in the dream

the baby contorts as if it might become a chair

its mother is saying

wind
I will pray
for you

-

its father is fashioning

from some god’s
idea
of a stripper
pole

a dollhouse

totem

-

the baby itself is nonsense

its head
bruised
by a rattle
would brain

a parrot

the body
a saying
from birth

I am not done / I carry my son

/ from the bathroom
his mother
died in…

death
didn’t see
a thing

error

in the story
a father tells
to blood flow

of how
she became
eyesight / sloth

in the maker
of kites

i.

the buzzard my brother keeps alive

ii.

the bowl, a clock

the dogs
avoid

iii.

dizziness

that strikes
the struck

25% off all print books today on Lulu with coupon code of PENNY25

my newest self published work is [MOON tattoo]

~

and, poems:

~

[opening line from a year with mother]

it crawled out of me and knew your birthday

~

[horseface]

you strike me as an invasive listener. I love your body. loving mine doesn’t mean I’m not okay wearing too many clothes. does this make me look alone? like, crucifix-on-the-dashboard alone? my mother fell for my father because he couldn’t find a finger to write with. horror movies lift me from poverty into a long period of healing followed by a jump scare. earlier, before you bled into a corncob, my brain had you as a spider spinning an infant. if it pleases god, I’d like to go somewhere time hasn’t been.

~

[early work]

the babies my father held.

the hell, the world’s
largest.

the parts of the house
that caught fire
in two
moving

vans.  the bully

mother poisoned
in the dreamy
media
of religious

thought.  the daring

suicide, the doubled
god.

show me
a devil
can enjoy
lightning
and I’ll
a worm
an inch
of its life

the night she tried to eat her parents, her brother walked out of his diaper and I told a bone what the body made me do.  there was no name yet for the limb you were born behind.  no name for what the alien worshiped.  landmine

on the moon
we watch
what we are.

I hear
again
of your
death, I do

the rabbit
math

-

I have a son
passes
for time

-

crayon
he says
or crown
of thorns…

his language
I try
to watch it

-

his blood

goes from soap
to mouthwash

a miracle

-

a miracle’s

mutant
reverie…

-

stick, stick, bone

-

for dog, I do
the math

the part of a boy
that is most like
a dishrag
from the last
supper

the laundromat
where one
gives birth
to a ball
of sleep
or learns
to somersault

the handicap space
where on
your bike
you breathe…

the flower, the grave, the clown
car’s

driver / her nose

the call
to blood

I didn’t say it was good

this idea
for a child’s
mask

/ it turns
what I know

the stomach

the owl-headed man
what
can he do
in the crocodile’s
dream
of disappearing
lamb
but watch
the egging
of a hearse…

Ohio
a woman
found dead
in a cake

the mouth
of the thing
that eats
in fog
a doll’s
head

-

the holy spirit
high
on the bricklayer’s
toothache

-

a cat person
at death’s
door

-

poverty

a belonging
moved
by many
mirrors

the power
came back on
the boy
didn’t.

I had my chance
to believe
in god.

the beetle was on its back
and the woman
unable
to **** herself
ordered
online
a rowing
machine.

mother’s garden, father’s ladder.

a black cat
where nothing
grew.

writing again
in longhand

about what
a lover’s

lung?

bike repair

my problems
with mice

I am

, in the failed
body
of the creature
that swallowed
my thinking
spot

, still
a baby

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNJXt4Gn0ZA

the cigarette
the worrier’s
flashlight

the past
a widow…

deserted childhood, electric eel.

if poor
put mouth
where mouth
is

the ransom note
in suicide’s
dream journal

the ghost of the brainwashed rocking chair

fingers
teeth
who’s keeping
score

no one told me
you were sick
but you

some mirror
waiting
for my skin
to crawl-

some noise
being made

some holy
noise-

some terrified toy

with its toy
lover

in sound’s
blindfold

in a photograph
taken
by television
the boy
was hidden
from children
whose madness
gathered
eggs
for the animal
in tail’s
dream

sister in the shower sings of taking a thunderstorm

/ smoking
was my way

is

of becoming
a woman / we know

a carpenter bee
as the simplest
foot
of an injured
possum

I jumped from a tree seven times
trying to break
my arm.

which arm
by morning
remembered.

/ a ******
doesn’t really see
his last
scarecrow.

/ if you open a pack of diapers
and some
are black / I have

four kids.

I dream
every night
one
goes missing

which means
by morning
the three
from the dream…

I am not the first to know how the world will end.

image

my second language, my lost

ghost / be alone

be like
a motorcycle…

your mother
she took an apple
from the wax
pig
museum / with what,

no,

where  

do you poke
starvation

a man goes unmolested into the knowledge of his body.  has one hand had no choice.  puts a doll in a carseat.  makes his boy watch.  a man recoils mid-dream

from a caterpillar.  I am

what I’m
again.

it takes illness
three seasons
and absence
one

to go
nowhere-

explain to my ghost

how my son
has two-

there will be other kids

a weaker
doorbell, a dog

underfoot
as we fry
in church-

had I known
they were details…

psalm alas, kid-

I located
for nothing

odd prank
the minimalist
pulls
on death

the having
of a slow
son
whose mother
reappears
in the grocery

storm

Lulu is offering free mail shipping and 50% off ground shipping with coupon code of MAYSHIP50.

some poems from available collections:

[cripplings ]

touch is a sign of weakness. my father opens his mouth after speaking. meanwhile, miracle, it occurs to me in separate car accidents that bringing me to my son in god is less an undertaking than that of arming the man who transports a stopwatch to a cemetery. do we live the lives of those experimenting? beauty is not alone. suppose it knows.

~

[notes for stimuli]

I start my sentences
like this:

the thing is.

thing is
my son
like yours
is dying. thing is

I was told
by god
to be a man.

I love you all.

I love
but start a fight
with someone
I’ve never met
over what
a *******

poverty

no one
talks to
not
in years.

one must apple boldly in a cornfield of rust.

baby clotheshorse
eats baby
litmus.

taste
keeps my tongue
in the dark.

~

[fasting vision]

to punish my brother
for no reason
I told him
I could see
his stomach’s
shadow
but because
my visions
never
work
I vomited
what my sister
ate

~

[sylvan vision]

nudes
from the circus
of harm
grab
the evolved
handle
of my father’s
apocalypse
and though
I call it easy
what I’ve gone
on the doll ****
I can’t help
but bride
up
a storm
giving oral
to a corncob
from fixation’s
honeymoon

~

[daughteresque]

what would she ask
sadness

that old blindfold
from the future

how did you
get old, how

did my father
eat
and eat
at the same

time

perhaps
you’ve seen it
the mask
that took

my face

~

[forty]

because I wanted the poem
to feel
as rare
as my father’s
anger, and because

a pigeon
is
what it eats, and because

mad with bread
the oven
my brother
buried
took a snapshot
of our dog
bigfoot
sleeping
in hell, and because

my son is not a pattern
his body
can resume: the alien was impressed

but my mother
god love her
was bored

~

[BURNINGS]

~reanimation

it is nothing

compared
to the sobbing
of worms

~outhouse

the bathtub is full of ****

it wants to be
an egg

~frogsong

depression

decorates
a bird

~miracle

a bunk-bed for sister’s hair

firstborn
I came
to soften
my brother.

before my mother knew how to sleep,
I slept.  father

was a thing
forgotten
by something
real.

lighten up, dream, we’re light
on crow.

the animal
your favorite
you won’t
become.

agewise
and younger
than stillness

the river, the room…

my dad
he tries
to cross
his mind.

has anyone
met me?

there were two people
both
in character
and god
was afraid
to wash
my heart.  no baby

in a mailbox
bled.

days before comet

I bite my tongue
this close
to a worm

the below is a tentatively titled and finished companion piece to my recent chapbook, infant cinema (**** Press, dinkpress.com, April 2016)

infant cinema can be purchased here: http://www.dinkpress.com/store/infant-cinema-by-barton-smock



shut-eye (in the land of the sacred commoner)

~
poetry and god share the same quick death.

I’m on what you’re on;
the eighth day of the world.

~
it’s all in your head. the newborn we had on a mountaintop. the word it knew from memory. its hand that stuck to everything but the dog our dog ate. the cold our dog died from. the tent we called aquarium. that we filled with diapers. that was never full.

~
existence is the wrong inquiry.

I was destroyed by an angel

for having
taste buds.

/ a pinkness

went on
without me.

~
if touch is all it can manage

the hand is poor.

I am the new face
of baby
doorstep.

when lightning
has emptiness
to burn

feed
the fasting
doll.

~
I am old and nothing brings me joy.

I did
good things
but I
was asked.

drunk
outside
of a dog
shelter
I am likely
to remember
a library
pyros
love.

my uncle
he is probably
still
west of me
able

to open
a bottle
with the mouth
of a living
frog.

~
and what
would forgiveness
do?

my kids were never born. yours
they hide
from the number
of people
god
made.

when dead, I was not
a bird
yet
my mother
asks
what kind.

I can’t tell
by looking
if he’s seen
the future
or seen
the future
again. I strip

when my stomach
hurts.

~
it puts me on my stomach

this grief
you have
for the switched
at death

–

god’s color has returned

–

the male
animals
in the grey
barn

knew

–

first

~
I want to say it is yes yes

puberty’s
painted
egg, the island

clock, the genitalia

of alarm…

I want to say it is orange

like bees
like
not all

the hymns
not all

condoms…

~
he says we are men
not because a raccoon
chased a bone
into the factory
of shadows.

he says it’s me
or the bag
of trash
and gives me
a knife.

he says before I was borned
we took
the same
bullet. he says mouth.

I kick
he says
in my sleep
and it puts
a belly button
on a bird
one
bird.

he says them animals
ain’t so wild
as a dog
in drag

and your mother
is the outside
world.

~
the robot is a ******.

the baby
it goes
from baby
to baby
with no
message.

–

I want your work to matter.

~
subtitles, ghost
pollen / I sit

facing
my father

he strokes
a large
bumblebee…

~
eating behind the mirror’s back
it was all
hick lore
to me

a scratch
in scar’s
nakedness, a loss

of infancy
awarded
only
to the deaf
who dug up
the ears
of god
for nothing
more
than the sound

of depression
going blind
in the garden
of the hairdresser’s

hair

~
death
my way
of saying
goodbye
to god

–

had you lived
or enjoyed
amnesia…

~
when asked
I say
I see
on the floor
of a mudhut
a *** toy
having
a seizure.

I kiss the feet
you’re the future
of.

~
not
for devouring
the mannequin
but for eating
the seeds, it was

(in a coloring
book
for cigarettes)

beaten

by a baby
a baby
could love

~
I go with dove to high

dives / I am on

the pill
the swimmer’s
pill / for nine

months
I’ve hidden
a rabbit
from no one’s

hormonal
christ

~
it was for healing the hand of the plain hand
that I
was touched / well blood

on a bread
crumb
massage me
a brainwashed
worm / well comb

all you want
the eyesight
of god / swallow

a hair
in the house
birth
built…

–

can’t
this once
a thing
die
in the sanctuary
of its double

~
hell is a book.

she reads it
in a room
that’s alive.

attic or no, I want
to miss
my father.

~
nakedness,

give it time
to recover

~
into something from his childhood
a man
is born. never

far off
what crawls
her way.

~
she reaches into the same hat for the rabbit he’s made disappear.

I sleep and the dark takes me for the bone

lightning
straightens.

~
church of intermission. church of the rolled-away church my fever follows. church of it ain’t a baby until it spits. church of the lawnmower left running. of the space you give the grieving horse. church of you when you die in my sleep. of musical suicides. church of the disinfected high chair. of the false bruise. of how to become a balloon in the church of touch.

~
in the library’s dream, the abortion clinic is no bigger than a fingerprint.

~
this is me
praying
for a photo
of my father’s
last meal.

me

praying
to have
the allergic
reaction
my mother
faked.

for proof
of animal
suicide.

a mirror for my toys. dirt for my brother.

~
and we touch to abridge doom in the bed of a headless man. and we struggle to hear a father verbatim. and we ask in a fierce wind a phone booth to please be a fireplace. and a starfish consoles a handprint.

~
/ I was spotted covering my eyes by a dentist whose childhood had stopped disappearing. how big is your family and who wears the mouth? is it true your dad sold to a city gargoyle a spray-can of ****? that your mom had no baby tired of being born? that their suicides filled a madhouse with cubist maids?

/ year nine: your birthday spider is put on film for biting. your sister takes one look at my brain and remembers what to feed and how to clean a cricket.

/ year eight:

~
my son doesn’t want the circle he’s drawing to touch the circle he’s drawing.

the dog
is a heartbroken
wolf.

~
she checks her teeth in the door glass of the oven.

the egg is dropped
and the owl
******.

~
when
did your caterpillar
become
a syringe?

I want to hide the clothes I’m wearing.

something touched
is something
mourned.

~
the woman had the suicidal absence of a man who’d just broken to his body that his blood was not the rooster patience devoured. if I peeled a potato, I did so in egg’s hell.

~
praise headgear, worship eyewear.

adore nostalgia, forgive

memorial’s
constant
vigil.

say god
three times, then

say mirror.

~
this is what you mean, kiddo

what you mean
to a bomb

/ it doesn’t help god

that god
is awake

~
for what
does the torso
pray?

the cocoon is music
to the mannequin’s
ear.

sister
she ain’t
been calm.

~
when grief
was password
and not
codename

when gift
horse
was horse
fly

when baby
little baby
shorthand
went all
stork-****

(on who)

to remember
god

~
outside the dream, I had written the most heartbreakingly clear poem about brotherhood. inside

was this boy
was discovering
god’s thumb
is never
clean. a boy whose mouth

was never
here. all those I’ve met

I’ve left
alone.

~
asleep in the pickpocket’s bed, the baby is a mirage.

I’m so fat
I’m fat
in the dark. I compose

at my lowest
a crucifixion
story

from the basements
my father
wired.

~
putting the meat
back together
in an unfilled
pool

we yawned
at the same
time / brief

painless
the unmothered

between

~
as overcome as I was to be gifted a hospital gown, I had nothing on the angel whose brain / for visiting the eye / was banished…

we are the dead
we’re here
to return

~
by death I mean nothing was beautiful for a very long time.

that, and when did you know.

the kind of laziness animals have, that kind of panicked longing…

and brevity, the faith
of insects

-

my shadow, of course, afraid of its borrowed blood

-

that barn
in the middle of nowhere’s haunted eyesight

-

the invisible
after-hours
birth, and the woman

who keeps the baby
despite
its perfection

-

this quiet in the redneck’s
library
of forgiveness, this thunder…

-

the agony of the boomerang’s maker

father became the man his possession foreshadowed.  mom had a purse full of spoons.  brother bathed any form quiet enough to make the kitchen sink.  I began to believe.  I began to hear in the rock

the thorn
it spoke for.  over the nest of a bird,

the nothing to eat.

I have a better word
we can use
to abbreviate
your dying
language

seeing mountain
then moth
gave god
a mouth

brother peace and brother quiet
dot
the same
neck.

so far, my hands have remembered being hands.

if on a balloon
a face
is drawn
you too
can call
it sister

whose dolls
have biblical
names.

sometimes
you’re awake
and your son
is awake
and neither
of you
believe
in sickness
the raccoon
mask
of sickness…

no god unkissed, no dirt…

and sleep, sleep
is a priest
whose hilljack
blood
favors
the cult
of the noiseless
ant

naked, I photograph your bed.  

it takes me where I stand
the low joy
of jumping
rope.  

birth has become a boys club.  

I can weigh two things
with what
you broke.

not a thing born
nor a thing
howled at
no
you are not
again
these things

the baby
it continues
to purple itself
where it can

it crawls, but is mostly stunned
by its own
vocabulary

the dog has the tongue of a cat

this is new

the child, the loneliest

reconciliation…

-

it is not quite suicide, not quite

career

-

sorrow’s racket,

as in

a deer
in the path
of an oncoming
deer

-

son I carry

no one’s
blood

boy spotless, wrecker of the invisible home.  oh mother, scrubber of the radar’s blip.