harmless
is a kind
of snake
on a child’s
backyard
slide.

a warped
sports card
is a stretcher
cigarettes
slip from.

***
is a nightlight, well,

go on…  

-

     I single out my only son for pretending to have one arm
when what I’ve said

is make sadness
from what you have.

I skin my knee.  I skin my knee a total of three times.  I begin seeing Jesus but only when I’m awake.  he demands nothing.  he is thankful for my knee and for my indifference.  he crookedly shrugs his shoulders when I curse.  it’s the shrugging that pains him.  it is his hope that one day sin will be a pet peeve of mine.  so that we can share.  he speaks so fondly of my braces I leave them on my teeth a year too long.  my father has me put my head back mornings before church so he can run the hair dryer on low over the open ache my mouth has become.  I talk on purpose when he does this and he laughs and forgets about my mother’s wafer-dry tongue.  how she takes it with her when she smokes.  on the roof.  in her Sunday beast.

a costume party in my father’s house.

     my mother
in her Sunday best.

little old
hermetic
me.

loudest brother
in the attic
with a stick.
in his mouth.

     my most housebroken
sister?

basement, on a stack of bibles.

other siblings, non locals, dogs, my father…

all in the mind
of your private

nudist.

I see so much of myself
in my son
it is no wonder
he

is where I go
to sleep.  

-

his wakefulness
is a gift
handed down
by a sister

     he had to stop
making up.

-

(as I once thought to save my mother)

on her fiftieth birthday our alleged mother hires a driver to remain parked outside an abandoned warehouse.  she promises to pay the driver extra if he sees more than two stray beasts and promises further employment if he consciously brings the uglier of the two or more home to his children.  we hear offhandedly these things and others

     as if we are hidden inside a very large cake.  

     the driver is an hour deep into the assignment when he notices a barefoot woman flat on her belly scooting across a puddle of oil near the warehouse entrance.  the woman is swallowed by the puddle before the driver can call to her or commit her outfit to memory.  he says aloud she was feral and her ******* had to be, by then, bleeding.  it’s christmas morning when the driver comes to and his wife’s sister has this look like she could **** the red from a childhood firehouse.  his kids are crying over invisible toys.  invisible because our mother touches the future without looking.

this dog, the stump of a great tree possessed by a kindly demon.  a woman cradles the homely thing and shares a dream with her husband the poor man’s empath.  I squeeze my infant son so lightly his age stops.  one day yours will be too young to remember impressionism’s grocery.

in fifth grade, the boy submits a report on being stuck with his unborn brother’s teeth.  the boy’s intent is to set himself apart and perhaps place a hard comma after the crush he has on his teacher.  as the teacher reads the report she dreads that by its end she will become convinced and so stops halfway.  she brings the report home and instead of grading it she daydreams about the sister she never had, that she surely ruined.  by sixth grade, the boy lowers his blood at will into that handheld thing where resides his anger’s only foe.

the memory your thumbs have of mine.

overseas, the tongue
splashed
with milk.

a sister’s arm.  time line of a brother’s
failures.  brother the runner-up
inventor
of shadows.

the only chapter the book recalls.

the book used to swat a hotel mouse
from your slipper.

     assuming it hasn’t been stolen,
your pocket bible
that’s been
to war.

nostalgia’s book of mug shots.

murderers mistaking boredom for regret.

the dwindling league of hesitant fathers
struggling to stay
in formation.

paroled amnesiacs
last seen
by this
photo.

naked, the father
pours two cups
of coffee
in the kitchen-

     lowers one
into the cupped hands
of a statue, and takes the other
to the equally
bare
woman
coming to
on the lawn.

similar persons
of colder weather
gather elsewhere
and disrobe.

all await
the dog of evening.

its blindfolded boy.

I pick a child to bring with me.  it’s Sunday, and we need bread for the week.  the market’s been gutted since the lot of them were born.  I used to errand with my wife but it made her feel alone.  we starved together for months before receiving notice we were no good at it.  in that same notice was an invitation to attend a symposium on regulating orphanhood.  we decided to go and at that to go arm-in-arm as a grandly private joke.  we came home ready to be serious and went about choosing six, all sent from heaven, as we thought they’d been kicked out.

my mother and father cower under the kitchen table and my brothers are dead.  my father has clammed up since asking me to tell him something he can take to his grave.  this last week I’ve mastered placing my ear on the table in such a way I hear what I am supposed to do.  impossible things that are no longer terrible.  dispatches from a simpler region.  for example, hack your roommate’s youtube account.  also, poison the non-pregnant.  my baby sister laughs with me when I say some of these aloud.  she believes the table is possessed by the devil’s ghost.  her beliefs are clear and specific.  the ghost thinks itself the actual devil, and will need a good amount of therapy.

three skinny kids, boy, boy, girl

beat on a fourth
and leave him
wheezing
in what they know better
than to call
but call anyway

     forest.  the beaten boy

swoons
into tree after tree
and loses
his memory.  

     he spends a few good hours trying to pin
the small shadows
of overhead birds
beneath his feet.  

he thinks there might be a girl
watching him, that she might weaken
for one

who possesses
odd powers.

before you die
take a walk
with a dying man.  try
to keep up-

     you are currently
the afterlife
your past lives
overtake.

surgeries
performed
in parked cars.  

the ghost
limb’s
     muscle
memory.
  
knowledge
of the child
lord

before adoption.

some
having occurred
from natural
childbirth

others
conceived
by two
dissimilar
thoughts

     and still others
whose first memory
is not

departure

brother wants to know if we are on suicide watch together or if one of us is oblivious.  I keep with me a military secret but here’s the catch:  once I tell it, I lose the memory I have of being told.  I have a hunch he keeps the same secret.  a nagging feeling I’ll be given my own bed.

father would later say he did it

not to smack the name out of my mouth
but to give it a good limp
on its way
to my heart.

I think of my blood as an evening wake.

my heart
as this woman
one day buried
with a man’s
cane.

our boy is gone.  boy’s mouth, boy’s knees.

I drop my jaw in an open field, turn my head
while pointing
at a kite.

     a man sets a chainsaw
beside the ax
at my feet.

man
calls the ax
a quitting
cross.

he seems so disgusted, honey, so disgusted
I lose hope.

the last time our daughter
fell asleep on my chest
must’ve been the last time
our daughter

fell asleep on my chest.

-    

    I hear you sometimes
using my razor.

your mother came at my mother with a fork.  

those first days
though I kept it from you
I told myself
you were too sad to eat.      

-

dusk, hide & seek.  

I’d count
and you’d count
behind me.

-

dusk, losing sight
of the frisbee.  the scarecrow

we think is a scarecrow
until it bends to pick up
a cat.  we think is kind
until it swallows

the cat
cat noises
and all.

-

I think I’m elderly

you somehow
replied.

the man says I can’t seem to get out of my own way.  the woman says I have a child inside.  the girl at my bedroom window says it’s the same rock every night that hits her in the back of the head.  the boy says he is silly with love.  he says this as his eyes cross then close before I can see them touch.  I am told by all four my mother and father live just down the road.  that at times they are not made for this world.  and at others, not ready.

the doctor
wore secretly
a nightgown
and poured
a glass of milk.

     his wife

disappointed
she had not seen
a ghost

     remained his wife.

-

( the wellness of my mother
  does not need
  my mother
  nor does
  the wellness

  of yours )

-

if you see a white mouse
in a dark city

a light
for which
I have kept
vigil
goes on
in my son’s head…

the first time I can recall a teapot whistling in the manner I’d imagined

a teapot
to whistle

     my brother was cutting himself in the tub, gingerly, a test run…

-

the whistling scared the **** out of him, the bejesus

-

being made of nothing allowed brother
to volunteer
in New Orleans
after Katrina

     he opened a few refrigerators

that’s all it took

-

without my brother, I’d be in his words

beside myself

     some ****** eared stranger mucking up a white door
listening
as if to a radio
announcing the missing

     blow up dolls

by name

he is reading
a hardback
the corner of which
borrows
his eye
when she knuckles
him from
behind

     because
her voice
is changing.  his eye
returns
and with it
the voice
he thought he’d lost
to adulthood-

     lover  
to his father’s
hearing.

I had a dream you came to me in a dream to tell me my book put you to sleep.  that a book is no way to live.  you showed no signs of being sick and your apparent health was disorienting.  a man stood behind you whose sole purpose was to know who he was before I did.  it bears repeating that over time I’ve added an all white parrot to my shoulder of choice.  on the one year anniversary of these dreams ****** preference can happen to anyone.

sick, my son says he has an eye behind his eye.  says he can see it.  at night we huddle in separate corners of his mother’s bedroom and take turns pretending to be on watch.  mornings we cup the mouth of our dog and shake the rocks into our palms.  when my son’s health returns I will need some help throwing the rocks, but for now I can manage.  the city has gotten closer but it’s a secret I’m okay with.  

     scary how almost nothing can happen.  when I was a kid I had a neighbor boy to poke holes in and a brother to give him to.

in the child’s game of doctor we were often short staffed.  many had mothers ill and fathers newly sober.  on my last Monday I was working a double shift as patient A and patient C.  on my break I watched patient B die so quickly I was sure she was faking.  I called for the doctor and patient B gave me this far away look as if she had just recalled the actual location of a wheelchair.  C wouldn’t make it, and B was given that location long before the lot of us could fathom.

mittens on the forepaws of a dead wolf.  

one must be serious
about art
but also
flirty.

I will raise you as my own.  

I will make two parts
of your mother’s
passing.

she will live in childbirth.

in a town of gentle drunks

I found myself
helping your mother
place a brick     on a magazine

known to give
your father
hope.  

     when I told her I could no longer watch
your father
circle        
the brick

she told me she dipped it in motor oil
once     (and how that was enough

bible)

the man without white hair returned your comb.  he said half of his dog is still missing.  I thought we could set aside some time tonight to be sad.  the kids will be here but if we work together I think we can make them believe they are not.  the man agreed to wait but then proceeded to turn me away.  so many have it I fear white hair has become the norm.

I heard myself reprimanded for childless behavior.  I saw myself as two of the same people.  my older brother gave me pennies he thought were sleeping pills.  we later agreed I thought the same.  the funny talk went from my mouth into god only knows.  strangers begged me to repeat myself but not a one could tell me what I’d said.  those far to me sent word, or meant to.  my sister showed up out of the blue but stayed just long enough to send her privates into hiding.  my mother and father promised to punish me for no reason.  I began to love them for giving me a son.  I began by telling them I was in some trouble.

as some things incorrectly have wings, we stamp a chicken into the hood of a cop car.  the groundskeeper on break inside the church wonders aloud how much is left of the lord.  a boy not part of our boyhood bikes over to us with his feet he’s named individually show and tell.  the cop chuckles but straightens out when he sees what I’ve made of my hand.  the boy says careful it might stay that way for good.

at thirteen years of age she began seeing single.  I report this from my own dream of becoming a priest.  as her father, I can prove her first twelve years were skillfully copied by boys and girls alike.  as her mother, I am so so lonely.

hand-powered     for John Paul

we are without shirts.  our ribs, unshared.  

     you lift a mud flap to recall small stones
from a frog’s belly.  


light     for Noah

you write quickly in the dark.

we know better
than to love
the room.


advice for a kind of passage*     *for Jacob

invent only
what you
remember

toasting the cameo appearance of my twin sister, I admire the leg of two rather tipsy women.  a soldier stands on a bar stool in such a way his non-soldier friends become sad.  they shake the stool but not for long.  the soldier chides them for giving up.  the leg hops its way outside.  ahead of schedule.

the blank face of a blow up doll beneath a numberless clock.

a sleeping bag outside of a boy.

two brothers rumored to have nursed
at the wrists of their father
to reach the same
high note.

     gripping a rolling pin with both hands
my mother on the tin roof of a neighbor’s shed.  

a dove circling a church bell
to elude the crow
it was.

again, this word ******.  my anger loves you.  only my anger loves you.  a closed pocket mirror in my mother’s purse is on its own.  a person is a message.  the offer stands;  I will ****** you in exchange for ***.  this is not where we go when we live.

wide-eyed with our father’s exhaustion, my drifter of a brother enters the new house at night to steal a less than perfect fang.  the infamous gun of our youth.

my father carries a prop wall into a god honest prison scene.  my mother is there with chalk.  in character, her face washes over her face.

-

I am survived by my medically fragile son.  the story of my death is told to me by his future wife.                    

-

demesne.  a word from dream number three.

weather such that the man is moved to write about taking a walk.  a walk he steps out of to attend a street play put on in order to raise awareness.  they trouble him but not deeply the dramatic women on the verge of girlhood.  nonetheless his despair deepens and he feels he must widen his search to include the beast in its youth.  he resumes his walk in a past life no different than the one he had.

my father
the father
of a city
he was born
inside.

     father lit
by the soul
of his shadow.

-

city first, as in

city dark, as in

city first.

-

     his child a partial vow to be lonely
in moderation.

he built a church
from the nothing
around it.

-

not all
have a disabled child
to write about.

-

he built a church
from the nothing
around it.

I am homeless and thinking in unison.  yours is also my, beast.  I talk into my hands because I believe they chatter without me.  cold, where they go, based on the books I’ve held.  our beast can sleep without touching its thoughts.

she has put her middle name up for adoption.  her middle name is syllogist.  you will be reading for the role of first applicant.  you will die of natural causes each of which have been previously cast.  in the two accepted versions of the story you have a son your husband beats.  in the third and final version your son seeks out his real father and doesn’t need you as much.  in real life your three equally tall sons lift you privately from a parade honoring your **** scene.  this is theirs.

the two begin to talk.  I listen from a nearby table but am perhaps too deep inside my own head.  I am recently divorced from a childhood fever now living happily in my right knee.  my left knee suffers from a sameness.  the two begin to kiss but they don’t know it.  I suspect each of them has been born more than once.  I intend to keep them.  every pregnancy is different.  a kind of kidnapping.

it occurs to me that my brother’s intermittent addiction to waiting caused him this insight: your real life comes true.  it occurs to me he remains a telepath.  a telepath whether or not I write as beautifully as he remembers.  he sleeps without a pillow claiming it gives his ear nothing to do.  he scratches his cheeks and says look at these they are the ribs of a pup I am caged in.  

     the future of war is war.

brother calls late tomorrow and leaves a cut off message on the machine.  earlier today he left to you his temporary cure for the ailment iteration.  the depth of your sister’s bible remains too much for your dog’s mouth which is something you’d forgotten until now.  now being not the best critic.  the bible itself is wrapped beautifully in your mother whose hands are still broken by recent events.  events that evoke transcription.

we went to soften the dog in the way we’d seen our sister softened.    

when her heart  
was still
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.

a plump girl in a flea market

barefoot

barefoot as

the jesus doll

left

in her father’s

car

a car so yellow

it hurts one to be

inside the car

-

some lady turned up her nose by pressing it to that screen door
your kid seems okay
licking

-  

this my face and this my totem face-

make neither
too long

-

hope is a rabbit’s foot

secretly

the lord’s

slipper

this poem
is for
my daughter.

for the longest time
it was called
the hand & the dark.

I want her to think
it was written
quickly.