collected
by absence
his body
a truant hobby
pursued
by career

my father
built himself
a darkroom
where he’d often
retire
to adjust
the variances
of a single
delay

to pace
as perfectly
as the many

visitors
he was wont
to follow
with a great
and private
affection

an overhead crow

flat on my back
in the loft
of my uncle’s
barn
where I
thought to please
my father

and resolved
I would not
be like
my shadow

she who
upright
confessed
so loudly
that her heart

flew

into a quiet
sky

     and she collapsed



angel scene*

when on the path
some small
unnamed
creature
senses
the oblivious
coming
of a man

and wishes
in its own
animal way
to be called
into ash
or bush

i.

to the greater sadness
and to the lesser
for agreeing
to meet
at the mall
where as kids
you and I
became
separated-

I
having seen
a boy
I thought
was you
and you
a boy
who wasn’t

ii.

to the daughter
who writes
with  

when she can find it

an invisible
pen

    stories
for her mother
who moves
in and out
of sight

for her father
when he’s not

looking

by saying the familiar
such as

here I am, Lord

we take comfort
in the suggestion
of return-

     I so believe
and utter

here I am, Lord

but do not recall
the leave taking
my good Lord
provides

but instead
remember
being very still
for a very long time

a building went up
around me

I was very plain
for a very long time
and weighed
on the building

like an elevator
might
if broken

and in this manner
of being still and plain
I was called
to paraphrase
a certain

fey opacity

that went
I know
too far

umbrae

for Genevieve

your prayers include a terrible notebook, an invalid friend, and a man believing separately that we are here to place turtles upright. when you walk into the ocean you walk into the ocean on your hands. you do this to protect your knees. many think you are magnificent and these many you are on the verge of telling about the Saturdays that bore you and about the spider you repeatedly squash. the resurrected spider that is not a gift. if you could you’d give your youngest son a woman he could either swim through or swoon inside. a woman who could put him to sleep and rock in a chair the boat of her belly so untroubled to be thinking twice about twins. you’d be sad, or sleepy, and get to choose.

before I go to war

     the dark readies in the oven.
my father washes with a wet sock a knee exposed.
my mother

wears one dry sock which she removes
and makes into a puppet. or an oven mitt.

both
silence the hand.

idolatry**

a red wheelbarrow, maybe-

but not
so much
depends

on a poem
about it

as if
the news
of your marriage
is still
a secret
kept
in the mouth
of your bride
you go
to fill
your own
outside
while slapping
to your palm
a new box
of cigarettes
and see
a man
with his back
to you
his pack
half gone
most of it
spent
listening
for beauty-

your daughter
clopping
in heavy shoes
toward some
distant
thing

you’ve both
come to miss

the free kittens and then just the one.
how I tried
not to run
out of people.

how I kicked
in a town
famous
for two things

     a quilt and a lake.

how before I could throw it in the lake
     the stone became a drop of water.

these are not without image, but I did see them.

     the miscarried child in a graduated medicine cup-
how I almost poured mouthwash there.

my son says
he is as sick
as a whale
and I take him
at his word
but ask
anyway
has he swallowed
anything
he should not have
and my son says
he was told
to swallow a pill
by a small woman
who pointed
to a smaller man    
     who got to the pill
first

so often we voice
our want
to turn off
the brain

when in truth
we desire
the brain
to momentarily
empty

that the film
in front of us
can quietly

go about
in the dark

if more than once
the brilliant thing
you’ve said
gets you laid

stood up
by his thoughts

you are to receive a photo taken two to six years before your death.
it will arrive by mail in a white envelope.
if you receive a photo in any other colored envelope, it is a fraud.
in the photo, you will be asleep.
if the photo does not reach you within 30 days from the date of this letter
     don’t let it keep you awake.
     in the event your age does not permit an appropriate reception of mail
you will be referred to one of our many sadder departments.

choice:  genetic.

soul:  hmmmmm.

boy:  a girl in that pre-vowel morn.

blame the tree, what in it, burned:
a scarecrow on hands of straw and knees afire.
a pinball rabbit surrounded by ankles.  
a soldier’s kite.
you, who walk in circles.

brim of my hat.

the mime made to put it in my mouth.
but the wind picked up.
it was three blocks suspended before the backside
of a fan

pulled it from the street
and into
a pawn shop.

it dropped to the floor.
all very
  
dramatic
said some clown
to another.  said the other

to his white hand

always putting
it on.

I was told by the mayor of promised elevators
a film starring my father
had been restored
to the city
archives-

                 that, so I could get there, the mayor had halted
for one day
the lowering of pianos.

pianos
not one of which
I would spot
on my way.

the woman she is holding an umbrella over the man she is yelling at.  the man he is blowing into the bowl he’s made of his hands.  a boy sits at their feet with his back to us and is bringing what we can guess is a toy to his mouth.  you joke he is laboring to light a cigarette.  in the rain.

"We enjoyed our time together, all the good and bad weather and I cannot forget the cries of my friends before they died."*

I am explaining it’s a duck that for some reason sings you to sleep.  I say I don’t know what else they will come up with.  a man in the alley has brought his daughter there and is punching her in the arm and I don’t think it’s playful.  I say this, too, but the duck is singing and you are drowsed.  the man is hugging now his daughter her arm a carnival prize.  I turn the car radio on and have to lower it but lower it too much and leave it.  I watch as a woman who seems to be hiding some fetal creature in her back walks to the door of the clinic and leans at it with a key.  she then pulls the door but it doesn’t come.  she is surprised and drops the key and bends for it and its then I swear the creature yawns.

slicked
with sadness
a branch.

the skinny
legs
of rain.

into the wood
a man
whose daughter’s
hair
is a ghost
fighting a ghost
for her head.

whose daughter
has not slept.

such cures
the town
talks.

put the sick
every morning
on a different
porch.

use
the same
nail.

if one is awake
**** a crow
or *****
a stop sign.

a dusty toad gives my father fits.
my sisters run through cobwebs.

I pluck ticks from our dog and put them to my ear.
I think of my blood in dog years.

     it is good to be old.

to step once and smallish away
from bare backs and on them the spiders.

the train, son, is very real.

you roar in your mother.

-

it is so loud you cannot hear an angel ****** an angel.

-

the country has a leader. the story is
she has a whiteness

no one can see.

-

I’ve not understood the saying
of weakness. that said, I’ve one for

tunnels. cloche hats. and Africa.

-
 
I broke my arm, I met your mother.

it is of use
that I push
this train.

in anything, uncoupled, there is death.
carneys, clowns.  canaries, in them, that sing.
soul: one of many karaoke bars
from which the devil was primarily
thrown.  this work

of taking, from the body, its death.  work
for men whose eyes if shattered would release
nothing.  men at your window.  men watching
you watch
horror films.  the cant of each head
polling, in its mask, a sameness.

soul's arbiter:  toothless.
because it is a tooth.  the poor, they take
the head of an ant
from the die
of god

     they take it to mean
decay.

I was trying to write about ***.  
it’s not like I was planning to be there.
I had a cotton ball in my hand; I walked out.
a bird circled high.  
I could hear my garage door surrender itself, flatly,
to a low heaven.
I was sad not to have the work of my arms behind me.
sad god would not once be startled by an animal.
the leg of my pants drooped from the mouth of my mailbox.
gentle cloud, and I quote

I thought of you in uniform and was copiously delivered.

under the cover
of white sheets

from the docked
and burning
boat

our children
downhill

     (like rabbits
      from a recently
      humbled

      tree)

      leave us
when we
drink

as the hell it was
to record our whimsy

     as the hell it was
to read it

oh and honey, look, it’s the same scarecrow the lightning could not wholly take.  it is telling me, oh gosh, about the suicide of our neighbors last year.  says they kept it a secret from each other.  the man got to himself quietly in the bathroom and the woman took a shotgun into the basement.  time of death had the man going first.  you think it was them on the left or them on the right?  them on the right had a kid, a little boy, I think.  what age would our son be?  their boy was about his age because I remember taking our balloons down and the man asking me should he take his down.  they didn’t give the boy a middle name, he said.  out of the hour or so we talked, I couldn’t file that one.  was the main thing scared me off.

was you could wrap a wooden spoon in aluminum and press it to the tongue of an infant. was you could smoke at work. was man was an act other men would surround. was your body would make of soul a ghost. ghost in a balloon holding its breath. was every stone was the head of a stone child. impossible. was vacation would yield vision a shore spat whale or a girl your age absently wiping the blood from her finger onto the leg of a bored white horse. was a woman would know she was pregnant and by knowing would be heavy. was gender was a kind of solace.

     was you could climb a tree wearing a dress and any looking would be a gift given to kite. was a rag for worry and a rag for pain. doubling as bath towels. was we understood the Bible to be written very well. when the saying of we was more specific. we without healthcare having also said amazing things. was my mother went to prison. was tomorrow your father would visit. might she turn, be your mother, and love him.

oh recite
to the same
snow bent
tree

for which
the roof
of this house
waits

this wish
to attend
sparsely

the box
of dreaming-

for the sleep
we need
keeps us

so long
awake

that in the morning
we send
our sons

one mother
beside him
pulls disease
like ivy
from the wall.  

he puts his glove
where her breast
should be.

with a finger
of hers
she traces
the moustache
drawn
on his visor.

I like this scene
because I have kids.

in most of your fields an elder woman with a polaroid camera waits for a squirrel.  

the kids have gone two or three years now without being raised.

a recent accident:  the lame girl knocked into a box of baking soda which spilled and ghosted
     a roach which disappeared into a white cane then reappeared on her hand.

less recent:  the smaller boy lifted in the grocery a bag of dog food over his head while the bigger
     pushed the cart into his back.  

the short period of time the match goes unlit by your tooth is paradise.

I am reading
about a piano
when you begin
to play.  

-

I will continue
to wish
you were dying.

-

you say
to pictures

me, before I was taken.

-

you have one story involves a failed grenade.
I wish two, you wish
ambitiously
none.

-

forgive me, death, I am drunk.
sober, I sell doormats.

-
  
in our imaginings
gutted baseballs

became

the skulls of small animals
through which the wind

called heads.

-

in daytime, you inspect
a dark stone.  you tell me it could take

all night.  

-

in heaven’s garage
they’ve yet to make
a horn
that works.

-

if I leave, it is to write this poem.

i.

one helpless, one permissive
I made quickly
equal cuts

in the newborn-

     deep that they’d honor

my witness.

ii.

to pre-empt déjà vu
I tailored the newborn’s gown

to the debt of its body
with such fabric
I could not afford.

iii.

that it could sound check
the echo

     I named it child.

iv.

     renamed it whistle

for how the wind
picks up
forgetting.

i.

thoughts of brother-

     a panther
half biting your arm
while you sleep.

ii.

     deliberate man, your father.
his early morning, his garden of bookmarks.
smoke from the ash tray, from the picture
     of him on the tractor.

iii.

on the news, they are talking to your mother.
she tells them her son
your brother

walked into a crowd
once before
but did not
explode.

iv.

she looks good on camera.

     greyer.

five bodies
in a one room
cement
house.

an inventory
of warm
voyeurisms.

I don't want to know
who's been looking.

it is my job
to approve
the older machines.

add
a second room.

three year olds
not seeing
birds.

coarse, now,
the part
of my belly
that prays.

dry ribbon
this road
I could take
to the one
could tell me
it's autumn.

dogs, here, they parrot
the passing
sirens.  and trucks
pull nightly
away.

the ancient anxiety of dogs.

has winter
no levy
it cannot call.

bread;

the saying of bread.          

bald man
in a hair salon

religion.

but also, bravery.

our present loss, lost
to the foreclosure
of immediacy.

litany's take,
a rake.

treads your boy
to banquet-

passes my own
pulling a mouth
from a wire fence
and waves.
 
was not believed
a child

this faith.

the strength of my father
to **** his due.
the strength of yours, too.

be still.  and full.

has place
no debtor
in lull.

a hotter hell fore I got that praying mantis in the jar.  tighten that lid tight said god said father as he took a match to the tick on my neck.  he went inside, I picked up a stick.  stick I threw short the length of heaven as heaven I thought was a road.  the road, at that, our house was on.  get yer brother's dog and call it a night and I did.  and the dog, too, making it in, before anything fell, that stick caught on the bottom frill of some curtain calling down the middle of no show nor audience for it.  

     if it could have been reached, the blackest point in a man, it wasn't.  but the point just before, my mother knew- to turn the bulb, in her white hand, just so.  turned as a globe with a knot in it, knot made of knots from the belly of my brother, nervous fat friend only friend of the outdated world.  he would take with him one night his dog

and shoot himself.   they'd argue what night for a week after.  loaded the gun proper at least and my father would be dead today white hands or no had there been more than one gun she knew about.  I never told, not even the night, how that mantis stayed alive on its tack beating its wings at the frog-throat black like an eyelid against a thumb and my brother I told him he can't sleep through anything but go to sleep anyway with that dog that was my dog long before you were born dumb as a ****** in a mirror.

everyone called him Moe, and not just his friends.  Moe, he didn't believe in beginnings, but his wife would tell people when it started.  it started, she would say, when he stopped eating his lunches.  and he guessed that was about right, as right as a wife can be.  he'd come home from work with his pail and set it heavy in his wife's right arm as the baby, the youngest, would be in her left.  he'd say, no I didn't, maybe tomorrow.  then he'd go out to smoke but he wouldn't smoke.  he'd leave the cigarettes in their pack and walk out to the yard and think about putting his fat neck in the tire swing.  he'd come back to the house and put his fat hands on his daughter's shoulders and say he was home and he would be home tomorrow to eat with her and her brothers.  he wouldn't be, though.  not right away.  on the weekends he'd sit on the step with his oldest son and watch little men die.  such a small drop, from that step, not enough to **** a man.  his son would just look at him and take the man from Moe's hands and place him on his back again.  soon the day came that he left work on his lunch hour.  his daughter said thanks and poked his belly.  he could hardly move in his pants anymore but he managed to sit down.  he asked his wife for the special and pinched her leg.  coming right up was a plate of canned ravioli.  **** ravioli he said.  but he didn't say it mean.  he said it as if he'd just asked for permission to hate ravioli.  he said it again.  he said a lot of things just then, his mouth full, his wife opening cans in the kitchen.  he addressed god directly.  after these many years, he addressed god head on.  he made for his truck.  god, Moses here.  it's the ravioli, we have too much.

yours
that the bird
not have to carry
its cage.

mine
that the bird
not have to carry
its cage
in its beak.

ours
that we are not tired
sitting together
this early

easing
fish bones
into bubbles.

i.

eating is done fast and alone.  teeth
chatter
in the corner,
     a rabbit
muscles
in the mouth.  sister
visits
     naked
save the sheet
she learned
to wrap     in college

     while

haunting
tents.

ii.

dogs at the door.
father
shoeless     in the basement
negotiating
claw
&
cigarette.
 
iii.

grasshoppers press the palm, spit.
mother swats
her magazine
at hard
boys     hits

the wall, these pictures
that have
her smiling, shrug.

iv.

     sleepwalking like something brother won at the fair.  

we nudge it.  put the bread

back of the mouth.  injured

deer, slanted

mailbox.  wife

a gown
ghosting
her legs

     keeps
taut
the clothesline
from hospital
to home.

woman not womanly.

living's dry gesture
at the open gown of the sick.

scraped by leaves a body.

a second son
in a blanket grandmother makes.

of god we've been speaking.

hospitals when we were younger.

the tree where snakeskin.

hope not for.  but for

statues of them.

live in a dent.  the electric

left in a crater.

we release, outside, a balloon.

bury in the land an arm made of earth.

     to curtains as fingertips

of babies
to scars.

click in the hall of yesterday with.

heels of irretrievable mercy.  

hope not for.  but for

statues of them.

     an agreeable ****** in stirrups.  a cradle

taken by birds.

in hangman, how the head
is first.  in chess

how father.

in the stranger’s vacated car, he counted seven dogs.  

the town was a.m., a grocer’s dream, a fisherman’s desperate tooth.  

tragedy, his raincloud, what else

     it wept.  wept the window down.

I was to carry my wounded dog to the crucified Jesus.  I was not to remove a single one of its teeth.  for luck, I was to touch the back of my wrist to the blowzy heel of my kneeling mother for which I would need to set my dog down excited as it might get by the man in my father’s chair.  I was to fetch my sister from the desert and I was to sole her feet with fish.  I was to find a ***** and call it by name and convince it that all would soon be burned by the bottoms of tiny soup bowls.  these bowls I would need to clay myself.  if I knew not where to begin, father said I was to ask the Lord but warned me he’d already asked him once.  father afterward would say he loved that dog too much.  which meant he loved me more.  said the Lord.

for jacob*


in dark
I’d make
the bedroom
door
     and there
     pause and bless
the toy driver
of the bus
for lighting
up-

but you
would stir
at my attendance
to an absence
not yours     and I would return

before trying my lead
again

     fourth brother

want told

you swift
you lovely (you)
were book

    want see
gunwoman
mid-stride
stopped

by man invisible
     man with
tape measure

     want god
flimsy and sudden
to collapse
but first
to press

     illustration
of button

want art
upstaged
by upset

toys

we had to **** many animals.  my father, every month, cursed a pig its lack of horns and cursed the out-of-town buying of dogs.  I took my sister once into the basement.  I blindfolded her with a black sock and told her careful there’s a pin in your hand.  mother would come from that basement pulling at her shirt and I’d nip it at the neckhole with my teeth and I could feel each nerve around them firing.  the whole of our ordeal was indeed terrible but people would talk as if they knew what they’d do or knew what they’d not.  talk as if they’d know it if they saw.  it come up for awhile and tried to live with us and I can’t say it wasn’t nice having something to put your finger on that wouldn’t thieve your sins.  I fed to it lemonheads and it seemed happy but even I admit one can overdo it on the lemonheads.  it was father made it go back in the basement because he’d tired of telling people it was his brother and pretty soon his real brother would be coming to visit.  was a visit would last the length of his brother’s life but we didn’t know it then.  the devil went its own way at some point during my uncle moving in.  we were all of us pretty clumsy and it could’ve been the noise we made.  I remember being grateful for my uncle’s heart of gold and how he wouldn’t accept our apologies saying it’s just a bunch of stuff I don’t even know I have.

an indian woman, you guess, runs room to room.  
moves, by herself, beds.  

sleep, but for its vacant host, would sleep.

the hollow locust in your right breast
     leans for the dust in your left.

for roach, your hands made of toast.
for mouse, a mouse-sized moth.

a crude infant can be made and will be
     from a phone’s receiver.

     dark food, and below it
your body of bright milk.

my first hands with arrowhead made pentagram under hood of daddy’s truck.  then in dirt.  then tree.  he was in tree when I got there and stayed there for what I carved.  not looking up I stayed there too until the next thing which was mom bullhorning me out the window of the truck.  I could see myself running to the truck and to my mom but it was just a vision.  instead I moved to make the tree to where daddy was but I took my eyes off of him and he went.  my mom’s way of seeing had her finding me in no time and she coaxed me with the arrowhead I’d dropped.  she took me home to my brother and put our three spoons in oven.  three the count of times she’d heard me say ****.  I didn’t then and told myself I’d never curse a fourth.  when the pan was taken from oven by brother he took one for himself and winked and for the other two mom pled her milk.

the boy kicks on his back, which is good for his memory.  
the house does not clamor for care.
the dryer has a thought, fantastic, like a pony.
the mailman, jesus christ, the mailman has caught
his sleeve
on a branch.  the boy’s mother is laughing.  indeed,
she may die.