i.

horrors of the gentle;
a list.

father

in a son's grocery.

all things tower.

ii.

I am weak but only for you.
I am weak but only for you.

iii.

if your only fear is that you will be eaten
you are not

afraid.

iv.

the mirror's
most fervent
devotee-
has no face
 
and in these last hours
has no face.

v.

perfectly round
the muscle
that slides
from its arm.

vi.

state your grounds

for burial.

vii.

a scroll, flat.  or a tongue.  

viii.

an elephant can be opened
with the tusk
of another.

its belly can accommodate
most families.
 
ix.

the under-shepherds
under

the train

cannot lift
a single crow.

x.

what one takes for god's coat

is probably
just a moth.

xi.  

my house
is your
inherited
house.

          and death its own angel.

penetralia

i.

forgive
each victor
his loss
of sin.

as a painter
of white horses

my talk is my talk.

the topmost button
corks

the wine
in my throat.

ii.

if you've blood in your mouth
you're a ******.

you've no mother
but it's her hand
lifts your shirt
to cover

that cigarette burn, that peephole
of god.

drops, the man, his book.  it has no end.  but what can be said to men such as he,
not open to the closed terrors of want?  I've doors to lock.  the head librarian
may never return.  presently, sir, I've a candle to light

squired as I am to the dark aisle of sighs.  
the girl, there, on her belly
pretending to read
the intricate press
of your thumb
on her heel-

I don't suppose you'll find her shoes.

you and I, we are kissing.  we are kissing in the bed of a pickup truck.  when we are not kissing, you are telling me about your father.  if he is sitting alone in a house, at a table, you don’t know.  we pass houses and I ask about the driver.  I don’t know why I care so much.  you have lost a button, I can see your breast, and you are closing my ears with your hands.  my head is a rock loosing the tread.  there are two poles without wire in the bed and I’m going to steal one of them.  you are looking for your button, you are praying it shows up.  I can tell you think this is going badly.  you are really looking now, it’s nobody’s business now, and I can see more of your breast.  the kissing is done with but I don’t operate like I know.  the houses are getting farther apart and soon there won’t be any.  I say this out loud and whatever you want to say about it dies with the driver as a car with three small bodies in it moves through him.  we are okay and I tell it.  you pat yourself all over, find your button had the whole time been nestled in the lip of your jeans.  I think of us when we were making out and how that button might’ve been cradled then not cradled by the hole in your belly.  you look at the button.  it’s like I’m not even there.

I have.

this longing
for Eve's
childhood.

there are men in my life would find it **** to look in on a woman bathing a puppy.  they are good men, and wrong.  I met your husband in the waiting room of an abortion clinic 101 miles from where you live and 73 from where you work.  I know some intimate things- you were driving, your son was playing the flute.  I know the damage a flute can do- it does a number on the lips.  I was moving my hands in my lap imagining film trays of broken water as if I might guess with my knees the weight of a newborn.  your husband has a wobbly right knuckle.  with that face he could be a mime.  he could be armless.  I tried to think of my belly as a balloon with a manageable amount of candy on the end of its string.  the night last to this morning I put a pillow under my back and tried to fall asleep but I have one eye insists to understudy the moon.  pregnancy as idée fixe-  moon and balloon.  your **** daughter wants a puppy but where would we put it.

two of my brothers gone to see that witch ohia.  cain, the older of the two, tells cain the younger:

best break the handle of that broom you insist to bring it.  

the neck of a goat pulses lastmost into a fence’s top wire.  

their way is lit by a river soaked in rabbits.  their impetus of road by an exodus of crow.

three ants they formerly would have stepped on are allowed to resume the full carriage of a cigarette.
a man they meet says he needs nothing but this here knife and that there trailing duck.  was the duck  
he says convinced him.  

because they are sad they let the man go and later the duck which would’ve spoken had they.

some of the houses less so but all are violent.  these two they recollect me in kind, an echo’s cough.

the older cain notes the dimming rabbits and pulls one for a fire and the younger cain reveals from his coat
a second to put over the first.  they eat gingerly as two sides of a dark hat tight to a frostbitten ear.

ohia is woe.  a prank of dialect.  how I  
 
could with this list of dry grotesqueries live a good market’s hour.  I would buy eggs and toilet paper.  hope
these two
believe that.

mothers innocent of crow chalking about in white grass.  fathers, guilty and gospel.  gardens

and pocket deer.  my sister has a stone, one cheekbone, and a kite.  how you are seeing

that stone, let me this-  it is not god’s tear, tooth, godcrumb.  nor is it madly

a raindrop.  she loves it she says for its milk.  but she’s 12.  digs

in the night
at her ear.

carry the kids upstairs.

pause the credits.

put water on for tea.

whistle.

leave a comb, lose a pigeon.

wonder the deep couch in the drawn bath.

find it strange.

use my razor.

don’t worry.  as a favor.

I shot, one summer, both my hands at my brother.
the tree he climbed was the most realistic tree
he could find
in that city

and I
missed him.

i.

talk myself outta church.

ii.

ain’t sad enough not to goof on a tricycle.  jesus.

iii.

nuns in garters.  I can’t remember
or be expected to
all

the titles.  but that one, we’d out

our knuckles.  

iv.

she slid under me.  it was like
she was able,

had space.
 
v.

I loved a boy for his dog.  broke a ruler
for my ****
in half.  after that,

did things to my knee.

vi.

are afraid most water snakes of water.  spend they
lives

being fast.

vii.

to keep us from being poor
my dad
kept us

in one room
at a time
so we’d have rooms

all over.

viii.

batman’s mom had pearls.  made it hard for me not to be
******-up.
 
ix.

storms don’t have doors.  imagine my talk.

adolescent my sorrow made me taller.  I could fold my ears without effort into the backs of my knees when I sat the unchaired ground.  

when we walked, sister she rode a worried duck.  we stilled ourselves on many an odd bridge;  pray, such pairs, that below any bridge passes the conscious river of horsehead and mudhoof.      

it was hard to tell what came first;  the duck or its worry.  hard to tell its not broken neck from its broken.  

the minute my sister and I were orphaned seemed an hour.  our mothers dropped easily into the same bottomless pail.  when we walk now, we listen.  my unmatched sorrow parallel to her mother’s appetite.  

I tend the bad back of a gravestone.  a broken tooth in dust-bleached shortgrass.  sister’s run off, but corpse

there are faster things in the body’s riddle.

from my mother’s side I had gone to see the happy blood.  I left her there, and she read without me her own lips.  I couldn’t tell if she’d been defeated by the box, its contents, or both.  I passed a bucket on wheels and a mop dragging a man for water.  I felt old; my dress, older.  I stretched the soft loan of my neck into the aisle the boy had made most of on his knees before the slack of his youth spent itself bone and pitched him the lesser length.  his sister or his young mother lifted him by his shorts and tucked his smaller parts with her fingertips as into the private mouths of even smaller fish.  a package of sliced bread fell from a lower shelf and relieved the moment its alien drama.  the boy convulsed as if he’d been allowing now recalled tape measures from the coil of his belly.  my mother yanked me away from the rent of that scene so quickly a star from my nose loosed itself into the ******’s acre, the white of my eye.

her age not so much mattering she talked on the twins she was about to have.  I held the hands of my mothers and each fronted their stomachs with full baskets.  my own stomach was in its prime and not yet the space beneath my *******.  I wondered at that point had I heard, ever, a man speak.  a song came to me but it was tucked as in a church.  my mothers on either side of me were not meant for this genre of grocery.  the low singing, the bulk rice.  we would the three of us go home that night to our videocassette of Witness.  it falls today under thriller and or drama but we knew it as horror.  mr. ford bends the boy’s finger in the police station but not backward, instead forward, instead very maternal.

her first love
a clockmaker
in a forgotten
teacup.

her second love
she abandoned
in the topmost car
of a ferris wheel.

her third love
an eyeless
thief

who once emptied
the coins
from his hat

onto the counter
of a small balloon

shop.

her fourth love
left sugar
on her back, and a hook

breathing
under the coat

of her fifth.

i.

leaves that would've been books.

and there a fire trying.

fells an owl
my son
     the upper bill
of its beak.

to night, I say me.

ii.

a paucity of stones
and brothers.

with ink
what once
we made.

houses to bell the wind; my work.

or widow and skinny tree.

brother says

how thin
we've grown

on the fat of self.

I hold the map.
am

its only
reader.

a bone drops.  

desert & cathedral
I tell him

     the words

I can figure.

bone like that don't break.

he has come to see the marrow of angels.
and I

what devours.

i.

strength
not the strength
a statue keeps.  

ii.

mother's hunger
the hunger

of marionettes.

iii.

the beggar
father hides
and the beggar
he hides

behind.

iv.

brother
don't sleep.

the paper dolls
have been cutting
your hair.

the shadows men think we are

we take
as lovers.

I hope it makes you sad, this poem, and here is why:

no longer are you on your way.

i.

love is not blind.

ii.



iii.

love is braille.

lifted the forepaws of dog asleep

one in my hand, one in dad’s hand

an open bible slid beneath them

pushed by my mother  

-

beside the broom, I see a toad-

though some suggest it is dust

-

to see her water break one might say

she swallowed a sponge

in fact

one does

somehow sweet in his want of no trouble, the unwashed man takes the door from your father and there they go hand in hand to the backyard where they wrestle as if hurts were people keeping them apart.  your father’s jaw comes loose, the man’s ear seems held by too small a magnet.  at window you a sickly child with overbite and a scarecrow’s pipe stroke the puppet corn hair of a sister’s doll and walk it cloud to defrosted cloud.  amidst this bartering of vanished weight your mother is being made to balance on her bare stomach a glass of lemonade.  

in three days the man will come back;  your father a bit healed, your mother less angry about straws.

I fear most
the silence
of god.

more than that,
the silence
of gods.

if any one of you
marry
a haunted man-

die first.

dear god

dear god
I will fight you
or anyone
for the title
of this poem.

I will fight you for my son.

I will fight you
or anyone
who drops him
in the ocean

     who circles back
to save him.

focal

not even
a half hour
passes

and the man
is tying
the kicked off
shoe

     wondering
if the other
is nearby
or in

the ambulance
with his boy

immolation**

when it burns
in the oven
we call it
crow bread

     in our mouth
we call it
wasp
then slap

first our own
then the cheek
closest-

when it does not burn
at all
we check to see
if we are wearing
black socks, if we are standing

on carpet

you have children.

they come back
with people.

the *******
on your left hand

shorter
than the others.

the shoebox
that I swear
moves.  your small feet.

the baby jesus  
I’ve never seen
walk.  the cartoon

flat  
part of your

stomach.  the tip

of the mumbling
needle

I never hear.  book

on a bee’s
heart
you tell me  

you wrote.

red words
on a page
in Exodus.

the yielding
bird red

in paintings
grandfather
gave.

glass
in grandmother
breathing.

     her hands
how they
would fuss

bow ties
to the palms
of jesus.

mother’s
yarn
too tight

on my finger.

visiting my brother’s neck.

water leaves its house.
the only word I have for absence is mouth.
some pills, on other pills, sail.
egg shells, halved as born that way
bubbles.  paperbacks, swollen, zippered
into a mattress.  doors ajar
the awe of room.  ark, whale, and a third

in her like jonah:  a loss
I’d touch
to abridge my hands.

the vacant eye of a birdhouse.  
a tiny black plate
that in a dream
you cannot pinch.  the mute
cat’s meow
in your belly’s
lack wink.  a dry
cookie
at the pursed
fanfare
of mouth.  your thumb    
moving over
your mother’s.  dark foods
untouched
as the shadows
of fish
by water.  your father’s
ear
taking blood
from the tilt
of a baby swing.  the peasant
swallow
of a mannequin
whose ******
once fattened
your brother’s

lip.  the paw print dice.
the ***** nurse  
her long teeth
packed away

like cigarettes
in the shirt pockets
of men

shy
by this
much.

morning my grandfather wheels with one hand his chair and with the other dips a net into the many tops of a pool.  he taps the rim of the net on the walk to better appraise the wet calf legwork of a grasshopper.  he lets the net touch bottom then releases it wholly to its listening.  he will avoid feeling like the net and instead allow his hands their errancy to the tugged down caps of invisible boys.  a healthier man, a more nervous man, would smoke.

he rolls his sleeves and can better see dropped pipes, freed hammocks.  an ant in the low, upturned hill of his elbow makes for his palm and is quickly there and lost.  not today, but others, he has heard children skin their knees at which point houses appear for them to enter.  

from the chair he lifts his forgotten buttocks and they hold for only a moment their dream of sitting.  he circles then the  cement sides of the pool and then it’s dark.  so dark that when he is visited by two bright shoes he believes they are alone and so ties them underwater.

recalls
its fingers
offhand

say poverty
could possess
a doll

a friend and shape
less
doll

whose favorite
and only
outfit

a schoolteacher
mends

while picturing
two pieces
of chalk

     the whereabouts
of her *******

trauma
that it is
to be
in such
a short
time
the same
age
the ghost of rob zombie
invents
futility:

ghost on ghost.

a street vendor’s cup game in three geese.

a slim parade.  even the clowns.

a bus stop where you can  
brush your hair.  

a girl’s arm
based on
loosely
others.

a cell phone beside a dog.  ringing, then not.

a notice, a nail-  the police cannot save them all
they are leaves
after all.

a returned
front room
window.  left to right
the life
in it;  the van of flowers.

writing her leg:  dear leg, I’ve written
your cast.  

two men saying yep.  then nothing.  then a third man
late with
yep.

divorce.  but I would be remiss
to drop
its equal-
a baton.                        

candy wrappers at the base of an oak
we call
tree.  

a boy walking his fingers into his mother’s purse.  a boy and a purse

that abandoned year.

say this:  the street is quiet and the wall.
the children bring snow to snow but haven’t
a guide.  a car is also quiet.  blankets
in the back of it.    

a baby is flying.  a small one has come  
for the blankets.  but the car is moving.
the wall stays put and the street.
the small one  it is clear is wearing
two hats.  nothing more
on the baby.

the sons they share the window from the inside-

they overuse nothing; not palm, not forehead.
they do not fight, though one is older.  
they share a blanket and under it nakedness.
their penises rise but not for long and both sometimes notice.
mostly they giggle, but with patience.  the ice storm
they relieve by saying stupid ice cube storm.
the wires they have been watching sag with branches.
one branch alights middlewise to ash but is whole
for the loft of the wind’s crowding
  
-as two might share a sole thing willed.

i.

horror film: the last place the poor can go.

our second date- her father had given her chase but in slow motion.

he gave me his hand and I took it because it was free.

I told her in the car while it moved what a cliché she was. she looked at hills

a few of them
stopped rolling. she had me pull over.

horror films ain’t rocket surgery. I knew what she meant.

ii.

mothers and fathers, lie to your children.
tell them the honeybee wants to die for them; that no matter their stillness
it will sting.
tell them each they are a limited edition glow in the dark action figure.
tell them the world is flat;

that when it’s not, don’t get romantic to traverse the banged on ceiling
of hell.

when the trailer
became haunted

we split up.

mom got the bed, dad got the couch.

I the television
which had both.

as I was burned
in the act
of nothing
brave

     the book of my hands
drew the flame

from my children
whose names
I mouthed and spat

to see the stalks keep needle at the child’s mid morn journey
to scarecrow

is enough. my fist leaves me like a coffee cup

set down. even the scissors

are ghosted.

a man carrying his dog stops to kneel.
for my distance from him, I am disallowed
any inquiry that would flower.
he sets the black dog in front of him in the manner I have imagined god
at the simple chore of placing those first shadows.
I am holding my son nostalgically. was my tooth would ache
and his tooth would ache
and both would be things I knew and he didn’t.

a lover of movies sets a chair in a field. sits the pillow here then there upon it.

his daughter her new trick is to bell the head of a spoon to her nose. to move is grotesque.

up close their house looks merely bigger.

her strange shoulder he sees it same as her fall down three steps. sees it without looking.

the spasms, the dormant minutiae of curse that by their accident of suddenness have killed held mice, continue.

mice the minions of mute thunders; the exiled scars of clouds.

the deaf curvature of your knee,
the low nod behind you of a humble balloon; these I address that I have returned the lover of all things made

his chair might the monstrous pass.

you pass
from the dream
to tell me
you hold

a kettle.  your robe

is open.  the tips

of my fingers
touch

the bottoms
of teacups.  our bread

will be
this morning
the color

of firewood.  I will begin

but give up
peeling

an orange.  the orange

won’t matter.  if a man is angry

he is not awake.  if a man

sleeps, he will give
then call it

taken.  I miss marrying you.

brother
I fear
we've made
such a deal
of Cain

he believes
he threw
but a pebble.

it’s okay to follow your dreams, son, but christ
you ain’t gotta
hound’em.

strip baseball

I was never allowed
to see your arms

where so many birds
had been

jeopardy**

I am pushing a bike uphill, my brother
is pushing
a wheeled
horse-

we are late for the birth of my sister’s doll.
for the tea that protects us.

my wife and I
we walked
in our sleep
with Jesus
on the water

my wife knew
instantly
but I had to ask
his name
which woke

the kids

of course
young letters
of dear
crow and holy
scare

had to
survive

and the
papering
of my insides

with smoke

that, too,

and these: (a paw print she sponged from tile) (a cup the size
of devil hoof) (wrists
of clay colossus) (who giggled in us poorly)

for love

leaving the theatre, he tapped, twice, the hood of a parked police car, lifted lipstick from a drunken woman’s purse and squared himself in a store window before shooting himself with his hand.*

his first film, completed, by the time he was eighteen. roundly praised. from there, a many colored thing. russian women, guns under suits, and cameos of indians with indian names. at twenty three, nostalgic for twenty one, his seminal ‘my white father’ wherein a mute albino would be upstaged by mimes. further brilliance followed. mostly in quotes, such as “babies are full of grief”. women ate from his hand and their eating progressed. one woman in particular became trapped in a man’s body and he married her. a child they tried not to have soon arrived and brought with it a list of demands from the others. the woman divorced him and took with her the man. in the midst of attending to the list came the advent of black and white which added a much needed plot to his smoking. his peers double crossed each other in small houses. he himself was able to get away with punching a young girl for the right to drag a sled. his child began to accept talking toys in exchange for keeping quiet. in 1973, his doctors, grey from vietnam, convinced him to go under. his last film was silent, and many complained about the lighting. he cried, in his mansion, for the windows he did not put in. he would not often entertain tourists but when he did they asked about his mother, her ghost, and if the east wing was really haunted. he would on those late nights produce a letter his mother had sent him only yesterday.

he was in love with his sister, always had been. after she was mauled by the dogs he had set out for his father, he made walking his home. every now and then a hotel of running. last year, he caught a movie one had made of his life and though he missed the dedication he did not

the death row scene, the little saw his mother used for the cake, the mysterious basket moved from bike to bike.