baby I'm sorry
my penchant
for last things

does not end.

the second
to last
man
on earth
sets a gas can
by a hissing
tire
and struggles
a box
from his pocket

     not knowing

how many
are left.

here is my uncle
smoking
as he throws
the same small fish
back in the water.

here is the cat
that he cared for
and the neighbors
who put it to sleep.

if you can hear
hear these:

the mid week a.m. church bell
accidentally knocked
by a man
naught better to do
than shoulder.

the street sweeping machine
lowering its brush
to send
pills, teeth
onward
to reservoir.

by noon
the brother
of an only child
splashing
nearby and in

the future.

my wife is opening her eyes and looking at our sleeping son and then of course she is closing them for show.  I am somewhere in my drunkenness and then I am definitely drumming my right thigh with both hands.  I tell my knees up close they are each a secret ear.  

downstairs I walk gingerly into a tower of paper cups and saving one of them I sit.  I put the rescued to my mouth and make public to my mother’s breast how its milk had a hole in it.  I can hear my wife’s hands exploring the boy’s legs for heat.  it’s not something one can usually hear but I am as quiet as a wheelchair set before a window.    

in another life my son will know great pain.

i.

a father doing sit-ups on the uncut lawn of his neighbor.
the father’s two children pushing a broken thing past him.
the shop the children map from the inside. its keeper
who is also the neighbor and knew their mother.

ii.

the grace of a thing could be a frog pushing off.
I am alternately sad in the legs, the body, and the head.
my father regards the misshapen wheel of our manmade
pond- bangs on himself and begins to float.

iii.

small one she wins a rubber thing at a firemen’s ball.
some flying creature her grandfather becomes.
his top teeth tremble like worried pilots in a silent plane
weighted with unknowable freight.

I prayed often
that you would die.

not horribly, and perhaps
at that age
by death
I meant
disappear.

     wherever you are

I have long held that your reemergence
would bring me closer to god.

i.

in him like the sewing needle of god’s mother; is lightning.

in you a koan.

ii.

now that she wants the surgery removed
they tell her
the womb
is a hook
that looks like a womb.

iii.

everywhere work.
stalks
pitch

the golden blood
of brooms.

iv.

mother in her rocker
her eyes
tire swings
her tongue

a cat’s tail.
 
v.

fourteen
my sister
martyrs herself
under the monkey
mad
in the stoplight.

vi.

in a church
hangs a coat
with a man
in it.

vii.

does not break loose
like they say

all hell.

like the contents
of a purse

my sorrows
shift

a few
are darkly
touched

some are
chosen

one I think
for a baby’s
lampless

mouth

I am driving barefoot.  my brothers are crying.  
my mother’s wake

the wake of my mother’s powdered cheeks

is over.  we pass the house my shoes are in.  they run
to one side of the house which makes it lean.  

my brothers to keep from crumbling are sharing bread.
hansel dum and hansel dee.

in the end my mother was mostly an ocean dipped into
by lightning.  

when I was a boy I sat a whole week in plain view
with a diecast car behind my teeth.

if you are one to dislike ‘in the end’ and ‘when I was a boy’,
you can hate this all you want:

a nightmare is a dream the heart is having.

here is my brother, walking away from a horse.
I have been painting all day:  and my brother, walking.

I had a dream you were leaving me.
that a homeless man was trying to fix the leg of a wasp.
you were praying for the wasp.

the man was homeless and you were leaving me.

I had a second dream a trinket jesus came poorly
from its cross-

that this was the wasp
I gave to my brother.

sad is the man convinced he will one day beat
to the mirror
his reflection.  sadder still

the cognizant woman.

i.

to turn one cheek, then another
of the dead
it’s necessary
that they take the chin
roughly.  

ii.

I wish I could tell you of a bird
and from there
follow it
to the edge
of a puddle.  

we could turn from them
and loiter.  open a shave shop
and swivel
the slow times
away.

iii.

I wish I could tell you mother
I am not dead.  that I am another’s son.  

     as you would say

he’s disappeared
again
into himself.  

that I’ve been identified
as being my father
all the way through.

iv.

or tell you I was merely guarding
the post
of self
    from which none
are relieved.

your brother slips in the shower, and then down the drain.  friends, with other friends, get on a plane.  your mother calls.  she is angry that you’re not angry about not being made to scale.  you say into a curtain- one piece of red cake please.  today, you will make it to the top of a baseball bat.  father will make a little promise below his arthritis.  your wife will make you happy.  she will say happy birthday- it’s a model of the city you wanted to drink in.

my father
he was in
this poem

yesterday
so deeply
that I-  ****.

they repo
even
dark.

people **** themselves all kinds of ways. round here being Millersport, Ohio. dark and stormy is how we talk about hair. the dead before they go. my mother’s hair was dark and stormy. wasn’t a monday; her boyfriend was upright and able to hold a pan. she took a couple to the back of the head but kept walking. went to this particular barbershop that’s still there, same barber, still cuts out the dark. passed people no street to be on so they were milled about and missed her darker and missed her stormy looking up as they were. something coming and it wasn’t my mom. all kinds of ways and my mom had to use a tornado. the upper half of her body was too much for the tree but it got its mouthful. her boyfriend held that pan for a week in the same hand.

as I am now turned out you might call me on the disconnect, heck, the dialect. you might want it to be horrible putting only half of her in that tree my own mother. truth might be, tree, my whole mother, and no tornado. I might take you at your word and tell you the tornado carries nothing but my home. that my mother locked herself in the cellar on the sunniest day of the year. that I knew beforehand what the year would bring weather wise. that she lived through all the following malevolence behind those would say to her son she ain’t all there. that when she came out of the cellar it was because of a bird she’d claimed to have heard in her belly.

on any hill without a cross, they pause, and the father points.

when they are tired, father and son, they plunk into
then off
the sides of valley homes.

one home in particular remembers thinking
kids these days
roll anything
looks like a tire.

your own father smacks whichever finger lifts without the rest.
says you sleeping don’t mean your epilepsy knows.

in your dreams the father does not point, and there isn’t a son.
just a man on one hill after the other, sunlight purling
into the seeable
dark yarn sea.  his eyes leaving his head,

somersaulting,
somersaulting,
godbraving.

i.

this is what I was thinking:

blow blood from your nose.
the word

stem.

and lead me to a flower.

ii.

dies adult
the child
of god.

iii.  

wheelchair, from its

handle
a ribbon
you can flick

like a blue
ear.  

iv.

her soul
like foil;  why mama

she pillowed

the coughing
iron.

v.

stepping on a nail
this is my father

he walks like  that

on his hands.

vi.

a red oil
ants carry.

dread he came upon them. the slow father; his shadow, ill. he came upon them, those girls, punching his daughter in the stomach. had a couple years on his daughter, and weight. it was not dark. school had been out an hour. he had taken a walk. had to drop his cigarette. had to pick it up. fixed on a point beyond him; his daughter’s eyes. ***** of paper not anymore burning. first girl had one earphone in, and one come loose; a string undressed of puppet. the song that was playing, he listened. he had the time to listen. mostly his daughter read books but she would sing and he would know she was alone. he counted. there were three. it took a long a time. he paused on ‘two’, good in his mouth. the earphone girl was holding his daughter from behind. his rock cleared her braces and she choked. the two, they kept at the belly. props of delay. he ****** once and pulled the light from his lips. ashed it under the right eyeglass of the skinny one. her body made off with her soul now less a window. fat girl chewed her gum and made like she could run. he dug the house key from his pocket and placed it like a second knuckle. heard the bones of small animals, crunch of hairspray, ‘fore the key notched the back of her neck. his right hand went numb as if he’d cupped the ***** of god. fat girl good part of her landed on his daughter. he pitched her with his foot but she didn’t go easily. when a bit of day could be seen from his sentence, he received a longhand letter from his daughter and among the common she also shared how the fatty eviscerated her by email.

hurry, grief, your mice
to a nearby
field.  

close, silence, your mouth
in the ****** scar
of mine.

distill, wind, the river
your ****
fiction.

scarecrow
if I am worn, let me help you

undress.

to have named

the animals
and later
to have only
two boats, two people

you’ve known-

20 times
I kiss
like this
my father.

my son and I are standing.
if our eyes have met, they have forgotten.
behind me, little lambs of worry.
in my son’s eyes.

don’t worry, because here is worry:

a stone in a grounded bird’s nest.

it is easy to say, I guess. to come up with
the fed multitudes.

hell is to be in two places at once that are both hell.
see above.

see below:

shade of stone, kind of bird. knowing, here is knowing:

the poor write good.

my mother I made her
black

so I would be humble.

I went as a soldier
into the silence of women

and found it lacked the peace
afforded hell.

I gave my only word
to my son, and he went off

with his sister.

I returned from the war
(took up with a man)

I was born with.

because
when mine
stopped

     your sadness
was still
moving.

I am at a word
for loss.

my age, father paints an abstract jesus.
mother has the kitchen to herself and sits.
mother watches my brother lift a chair and leave.

my sister lets the train pass and bites at the shoulder strap
of her bra.

not my age, I draw a violinist. draw a dog at the neck
of its owner.

there are those who would forgive our debt.
there are those who would not.

I prefer god’s early work.
at my age, apple. apple and rope.

sister
she wore
one white sock-

a night light
in that hotel’s
dark.

the windows
of my pastor’s
home

I thought them
spotless

his wife brought me lemonade
and washrags

then sat with him
inside

what brings you
to this untitled poem
is not real.

if he is not made of them wholly, branches, he will be soon. they are everywhere, and he steps on them, and they are arms from hell. he wears a child’s football jersey, torn at his size and his sorrow. he reaches into it and pulls out his heart, a red balloon given the what for, inside of which he blows his nose. he returns the heart.

a yellow adherent hangs from both nostrils, as two ropes being cut at and then loosed from his brain. the first keeps an arm from heaven; the second he catches and loops twice to put on his neck. one is never out of the woods here, and he knows it, knows here is Baltimore, Ohio. he has watched the people, some of them, leave; their happiness would be better called remission.

he is giddy when he comes upon a man wearing only a barrel and he tips it with joy and makes better his headway home. the rolled over branches shriek and wake the man who nakedly bails. the branches up their shrieking.

his mother he has no dementia of his time in her womb. why for **** the despondent are given captions like ‘blank look’ he can’t say for in his mama naught but canvassing eyes. she’s what he calls ‘at grocery’, shaking a coffee can she’ll buy because a done melon can’t hold pennies. she often at the neck is saddled with two toddlers but in his projection now there is just one making miracle of not kicking the coffee can into another’s back.

any girl that occurs lets him take her with his tongue only as she seems to know he was circumcised and after that much paddled.

he starts thinking on dad and dad’s laughing when mother’d say boys be home before dog because that’s how it sounded from seizures and of course rock candy in the summer. the barrel splinters beneath him to be forgotten and his legs go to bleeding stilts.

his last things by his face are insufficient; rock candy, barrel, and twin. I talk on the barrel, I don’t need it, not anymore.

I was limping the edge of the pond so as to confirm in the world my clearance given to me as before by frogs. my punched nose was warm and my grief melted from it and I cupped my hands together for the blood and what mixed with it and when the cup was full I halved it and my already thick shoelaces thickened. soon into this drama one frog jumped from the pond and I was startled. startled too that indeed it was no frog but a toad or some form of toad. I followed it woozily from my father’s land onto the land of my enemy. the toad was dull save for its hop from water and save for its courage and save for a sickly orange spot on its back that was a star when the toad paused and a mangled star otherwise. a couple times I lost the toad, the land was new, but I knew to stop and the toad knew to rustle or in my more desperate moments to come wholly back. everything had been planned and my body wanted to be generous to the toad and it was hard not to run or use my hands or ruin this paradise that I knew then as vengeance but now as existential plagiarism which is nonetheless vengeance. I would not rub the toad over me and I had to convince myself repeatedly. the boy was no doubt inside the house as his dog was not to be seen but his sister was sprawled on two towels put short end to short end as she was very tall and her sunglasses were cocked enough so that her right eye could see mine. the toad was in her mouth immediately and then her throat bulged but was back to its original in no time. I lost the toad forever then but its orange star surfaced on the right and then the left of her belly button. I told her I would see her at school and I would but this was the last time I would see her in anything but an overcoat and the boy would try and come close but never again pin me down.

a sort of
human
grief

in the dog’s
mouth-

a stick man’s arm, or leg, or crutch.
something

from the world of sticks.

And his wife would dab at the foreheads with a steam cloth and she would murmur leave my sons and he would count his sons and come up with four. And he would keep it from her that this was the bruising work of the fifth whom he had beaten in a hidden room and left for dead. And he would leave the kitchen walking backward and his heart would try to stay.

When finally God spoke it was not with mouth but with hand if one can imagine an emperor of puppets.

The heart it jumped back into its rightful cave but was not afraid and could no longer beat.

And the man took the boy by the ear into the room and asked for a quarrel and one was provided. The boy though was protected by an upturned glass and watched his father bat himself as a puppy will its nose.

After which the insects began to land but always the blood would come back to the face of the boy.

And the father was made to spit on a cob and with it brush his teeth. And he called them his sons what were four spheres of water.

nose to nose, my hands under his armpits and his hands soft and missing.
his legs holding onto his feet and the river or the rug pulling away.
I haven’t looked at anyone like this.

if somewhere a knife slips in and out of consciousness, I don’t care.
it will not be news.

sister spent the summer making a horror film.
she had begun to show and father was wanting to be sober.
the depth of our poverty knew no mirror. here’s how mom said it:
mirra, mirra. it made us laugh, leave, and come back.

with one finger in his mother’s belt loop the child lowers then lifts then lowers again his free hand without touching once the grocery’s tile.  the long front pocket of his jacket boasts from one end the upper body of a woman whose ******* have been covered with one stamp each and from the other the woman’s bare feet I’m guessing won’t make the trip.  the child’s two younger siblings recognize me from last week when I halfheartedly rolled over them with my cart and they graciously go stomach first to ground with their fists under them as if they’ve been given charge of a rose but are unsure which has it.  the mother looks at me like I am long division to be avoided much the same as I was looked at in my prime.  I have no cart this day so instead I mock stand on the boy and girl making sure my balance keeps me.  the mother says enough and presses the right side of her nose with the back of her wrist which upon removal has on it a spot of blood I follow to her hidden belly button at which the transference clings and then reveals.  I want to tell her my brothers never retrieved a single bright kite from a tall tree nor did they ever pull from their loose and ***** jeans any kind of toad that lived.

if you put the future
in your mouth
you will eat it.

on my way to a rose, I passed your father.

he was brushing a moth
from the ageless fly

of his eye. his body

he said
had been called
by a bell. balefire,

mine body.claimed
he’d counted
ever hill

in the midwest. his bike

he’d pushed up
all three. in the late field

your father
did not ask.

I told him you were.

the men have gathered with small boys on their backs. each hopes to be, briefly, in the shadow of a plane. the boys can only think with their hands how warm their fathers are. a shoelace or two teases tired the tongue of the devil. wind, the maker of mask, makes many. mothers at home pick blankets from the floor; fold magazines without looking. one of the men swears on the grave of his best hound he once saw a woman parachute naked. most of the men keep her there in that plane.

my mother
she stands
behind
four boys

her smile
mirrored
in each

like any photo
with my brothers
and I
it engenders

some to say
she was cursed

     I see it now

the ghost
of my camera shy
sister

backstage, the ventriloquist wept.
he shook one of his two dolls at a ceiling fan.
his wife in the show was not his real wife
but she put her forehead on the back of his neck
just the same. his cell phone rang
and the show wife made a little joke
of having the second doll answer.
I thought of my mother and my father
safely
in third person

they were taking turns moving shampoo
through my hair
as I hummed.

church.
entering the body
after a stroke.

milk.
my shadow
made of grass.

cow.
dumbly regarding
another’s art.

...

radio.
grandpa cursing outside
then inside
the barn.

distance.
two babies on their backs,
one a boy and one a boy-
their mothers

one of them truthfully
says bingo.

pyramid scheme.
I am sleeping
on you, on your
insomnia.

protest.
a man without sin
and his two
******* birds.

unison.
proving
your half
is also

unicorn.

crow.
we don’t use the crow.

...

infatuation.
what a knee
has
for its other.

owl.
pillow
for which
the night
has long
been looking.

yawn.
moaning
into mother
my father’s

     swimmer’s

ear.

high-dive.
or a very
private
room.

...

worry.
a thesaurus
the men
don’t use.

work.
for every right hand
a left hand
denier.

ants.
pieces
of hell
burdened
with pieces
of hell.

...

***.
two
as if they fear
a third.

poetry.
thoughts
before I have them.

house.
where mother
took place.

father.
all gods
talk
in their sleep.

body language.
writing
about yourself
with others.

the future.
every now and then
one is given
now and then.

suicide.*
might I record
this moment?

the home’s weekend janitor placing ball caps on the elderly.
something is said, and he is fired.
his kids recall the egg he’d make of his hand.  the delicate knock
of his joke.  their hair, or something in it, weeping.

the **** came boatsick and I made to light it with the marshmallow burning at the end of my shaky stick when father pinned it at the neck with his right foot and kicked it longside in the beak with his left and then brought the left heel back to break for the second time its neck and the **** hummed and then died and then I thought it hummed again but it was my father lowing in the soul he didn’t believe in as in life he finished nothing so couldn’t on faith have something that everyday waited and I remember thinking later after learning the word rabid and of the affliction rabies that authors swan to the dying animal from the shallows of knowing that the animal mourns maybe nothing and definitely does not mourn this that happens no other way.

before the suicide, it is just a note
my brother leaves

on the made
side
of our mother’s
bed.

once you are absent, your absence
is long.

it is for
the sake
of my mother’s
brother

that I
am named.

I know only
the most
insufficient
detail
of his life:

that he drowned.

a kind
great uncle
I imagine
he would’ve been
to my sons.

him regaling to my daughter
stories
of his wild
sister; wiling away in houseless trees.

whenever I hold my breath
my brothers fight.

a boy of five give or give years without a shirt holding a half empty soda bottle and blowing into it while scratching his bare big toe with his other and rocking the porch swing back further than front and he is the boy I see as I return after these many years to the house where I killed by accident my mother and he is the reason I turn back pretending I’ve come from somewhere still and waiting because he has riled in me a peace I haven’t had since that span of counting to 30 instead of 20 while my mother hid under the car my father had jacked up and left so as to chase a girl riding by on her bike wearing only ******* and a t-shirt which is dangerous and my father knew danger and loved warnings such that he would swear he would one day coin the phrase financial violence and he would be the first.

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if one can be taught
to stand on one leg
correctly

and to hop tenderly
one footed
past a stone

let the student
be my son

     be at the stone

of my father’s grave