instead of singing me to sleep
mother would put a cigarette
in my mouth
and have me
hold my breath
while she peeled
an orange.  my feet

were the first
to go.

to heal her father, she asks me to brush her hair.  she promises that when I’m done she’ll not only show me the scab but also remove it so I can see where her batteries go.  the knots in her hair are ungodly.  she says to leave them.  she says she can get any cat to come inside.  ******* is new to me.  I almost announce aloud that I must look often like I am trying to get a pair of scissors to eat snow.

my father snaps his shovel stealing snow from our travel-addicted neighbor.  his mute sister’s last confession is a first.  his doctor brother’s dollhouse is a hospital.  television is a byproduct of my mother’s human longing for animals.  if my arms were healed, I’d keep the baby from swatting its *****.  I call my next trick rabbit sorrow.

whenever the doorbell rings, father says it’s broken.  the outside world must be a quiet place to lose a baby.  wow.  the scratch on my memory makes me think we had a cat

or a mother
with time.

when you were with god, I alone doubted the sincerity of your absence

during the assault, I was seen praying an oceanographer into heaven by all but god.  a body entered a nursing home to find a suitable head.  I stayed put to care for the little blood they say never hurt anyone.  I have since held that some have both haloes of bird and star.  that any man with two has a single unnecessary blindfold.  long

that there is no wrong way to collect errata.

my second attempt
inspired
by my first.

my third
a success
my fourth
could envy.

my first
a superpower
given
to my brother

who noticed
mid dream

his dream.

she can see the beginnings of a boy in her husband’s abandoned poem.  a skull has nothing to do with a seashell and a dryer is not an oven.  god is in the air.  her daughter is taking a pregnancy test to prove one can get food poisoning from hunger.  

all I seem to lose is ghost fat.

I put my sense
of taste
behind me
by placing
a sick child
beside one
sicker.

a crow is not a star.

loss
is the salt
of now.

a bowl of brown rice
in a sandbox

the mother fixes nothing so she ain’t gotta hear of it breaking again.  the father saves on the sly for a rabbit.  the brother lives long enough to see one of his eyes challenge the designation of his sister’s foresight

as a miracle
of brevity.  the neighbors argue over whether it’s a migraine or a headache.  what one tells the lord, another tells an angel.  the god is the god that teaches a snowman how to have a stroke.  the animal learns to speak by having none recall what it plans to imagine.

I show
for the fleeing
your cigarette
attends

-

a butterfly
is at first
a butterfly’s
ghost

-

for the face
of god
I admit
I’m torn

-

go dog
catcher

white

a spider on the ceiling
in the bathroom
means father
fill
the tub.

your mother stood on water
before she learned
to walk.

something about a fly
speaks to her, the way it

enters a thought
to leave
a message…

providing for a child is like trying to hide one’s mouth.  the first thing god said god said in the dark.  before I brought my son, I couldn’t place him.  things from this world make me think of another.

if I am harder than most
on god
it’s because
he’s mine

I bury the bone I never gave to my brother’s dog in a whites only cemetery.  my wife is safe at home trying on dresses my kids would’ve seen me in had they not been trying so hard to recall their black childhood.  my father finds peace, his speechless snake.  god, god eats all by her lonesome the bird she made small.

for Noah*

my brother was blinded by a crow.

I’d tell you the story
but know
you hate it.

*******.

brother’s darkroom
became
the crow’s.

poor devil, his eyes are so dark he can’t close them.  don’t get my brother started.  as soon as I stop moving, there’s a picture of me still.  a story develops in broomstick hell.

I choose an icicle to be the mirror’s rifle as brother puts a cigarette behind sister’s ear and calls her transported.  father eats outside before smoking in.  mother does what she does for wind.  hangs a scarecrow’s keys.

in one car, a baby with a staring problem is on hour number three.  in another, my sister takes photos of her dog.  dying is a chew toy.  be as unmoved as your attackers.

I pray to god for good things and to the devil for bad.  the focal point of any daydream is a crow.  in my father’s mind, his mind returns.  in my mother’s there fires impulsive searches for lonely teeth.  at the sound of anything overhead, our dogs are trained to dig for confetti.  I have an odd request, I say to my neighbor the cat person.  I want to talk someone out of suicide.  the cat person is on her ninth vicarious life.

while investigating the disappearance of her father’s belly button
my mother was killed for wearing a wire

pregnant, my wife
scraps
her report
of missing
person.

as a disenchanted
surgeon
might find
religion,

I search your face for what god kept.

when younger
than ***
but older
than grief
my greatest
ambition
was to give
context
to the left hand
applauding
despair.

now, what I do
for grief
is translate
a passage
from one language
to the same.

most babies here are born without a trigger finger.  

but some
get through.

the spotlight
a dog
pushes
with its nose.

not yet death
but death’s
wheelchair.

a revised
stance
on angels
as recognized
by those
one has
not met.

she thought nothing
of the *****
shaped
bar
of soap, and nothing
of the boys
who’d no doubt
worked together

in close
quarters

to create
from their
gods
the ball
god

dropped, and still

nothing

of the note
in her locker  
instructing her
on how
to take

a bath-  not everything

takes the form
of a sickly
double
afraid
to meet
its match

sadness
is suggesting
I use
the email
of someone
I lost

I saw my father
standing on a chair
waiting for god
to take him
for a walk.

I started sleepwalking
around the same time
I pretended
to sleepwalk.

there was this bible
one had to step on
to reach the phone.

the past
the one
event
a life
is known for

it is coming to an end but I am still very proud to have kept my hands from my eyes for so long.  as for my ears, he hits me for letting them ring.  I hear by example.  I hear your father doesn’t need to look to know he’s been caught by his reflection.  as a last act, I hold this baby over a rain puddle, the devil’s television.

even with her fingers in her ears, she can hear the toy horse whipped.  if we don’t have food, we can’t pray.  my father was hired for his quickness, his hands

to salt
the rain.  grief is a guard dog from the permanent circus.

could be
god
is god
because
our world
is the least
of his father’s
worries

my daughter is seized by a dream to endure her mother’s preoccupation with death.  while waiting for his pillow’s heart to stop, my son resolves to keep the mirror’s brain.  that each might skip the parts I’ve memorized, I read to them from a room I’ve put on the spot.  when we pray, we’ll pray we were here to the idea we are.

not all
drones
dream
of you

mother, in the early stages of her food fight with god.

father, I can’t bury
my face.

in lieu    
of the lord’s
dog, raise

the lord’s
bone.

for Miles J. Bell*

like he’s laying
yellow
on his road
out of grief
brother
takes a drag
and keeps it
until his head
is underwater
is what they call
with apples.

his eyes
have always been
two poverties
unexplored.  he is old, alien’s

heaven
he is old
but not before
he knows it.

I exhaust my children by going back and forth on god

I know it is common
in drawings
to place the dream
above the boy
having it.

the contents of my mourning
include the phrase
I acquired
in secret
from a man
whose legs
were not
crushed.

I can hear myself seeing.

baby, baby talk, and pilot light.

kitchens everywhere,
god is alone.

my father jokes that he is only attracted to gay men.  

that my two left hands
must’ve rubbed a balloon
the wrong way.

I know if I kiss his bald head
he’ll ask for a comb.

when drought came
to my brother
I left
for the city
where I found myself
blanketing
manhole covers
with my coat
for women
who gathered
on rooftops
with men
whose daughters
had been killed
for jumping
rope

I have what is called my father’s face.  my son has a hand because my son holds a stone.  the mother stomps her feet in the name of the holy ghost known for running the orphanage into the ground.  the sister sees god but does not see god shove a dead bird down her brother’s pants.  the brother believes in god so god will cure him.  sitting on this swing has made me fat.

the knock knock joke in need of my father’s skull is all that’s left of the outside world.  hell was always the preparing of hell.

I trace my stutter to the narrative delay that uprooted my father who broke his foot in his sleep trying to kick his mother’s television.  I limp circles around those who’ve gone quietly.  grandfather, from heaven, I see my body as a surplus of irretrievable peace.

the right hand of god squeezes a bar of soap until it becomes a crow.  

there’s nothing wrong
with your son’s
black
heart.  

before I had a ****
I told everyone
I had a tail.

with a clear
head
I wash
my hands
in the dark
and spread
the fingers
of one
into the absence
of my father’s
glove
where
the fingers
of my other
had died
for the knuckles
mother’d
liken
to a puppet’s
ribs

I rarely understand what I read as I read it.  a horror movie with the working title

god’s wound
is being scored

in the mind of my unborn kid.  by the shyness

of my blood, not again.

bottom line, I’m not sharing a cell with god’s emotionally phantom parrot

I bit my tongue
when my tongue
was a cloud.

take cover, bones,
says my daughter
dancing.

I crushed my son
like a gift
and offered
god
my tactile
outlook.

stay small, future.  

persuade
a peephole
to show
some blood.