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

Cain and Abel
argued
over what
came first.

the homophobe.

in the child’s work reverie, man with chainsaw
we intuit a certain progress
has been made
in regards to the child’s
reaction to seeing

for the last time
a chainsaw.
  
we declare
man

to be an angel
given everything
but the memory
of its death, and suspect

ourselves incredulous
at being returned
to the earth
on this
our first
visit.

don’t hate me because I’m plain.  I want to wait until we are not married.  your foot is asleep in the foot that is not.  use the word inskirts.  in a fragment.  when I began to care.  Michael J Fox.  one arm died in the war the other arm went to.  we are not separated by such a fine line.  unless I throw my voice.  my kids give me the creeps.  on purpose.  my kids sleep through the night.  together they are insurmountably symbolic.  alone their self-esteem depends on it.  my parents are living.  I’ve only just heard.  my wife is inconsolable.  her pain

a consonant
worry.     if I lose the reader / I don’t lose the reader / to cancer.

I come in from the car.  I look at the kids.

there are still
three
of them.  I unbutton my shirt

and put on another.  my daughter, my oldest,

has kissed her hand
behind a curtain- but I am not

to know.  their mother

stays in the car
each time

much longer.  in a few moments, we will huddle

at the window
watch her
not light

a cigarette.  her daughter

is also
that strong.

to find
it’s the other
way

around-

life
a metaphor
for sport.

to know
     without

sufficient
notice

we’ve been here
so long
that none
are from
the future.

to provide
the afterlife
to those
left, those

available.  

     to realize
the town
of our birth
awaits
the return  
of our most
male
follower.

to be kept alive by a disease loyal to another.

to scroll, down, and cross
our legs.

three teeth fall from the mouth of my lover.
     I catch them in a dark rag.

my lover hops in place on the leg she calls ecstasy.
     she lifts her skirt and with it
pats her chin.

I fold the teeth into the rag and the rag becomes a rat.
I place the rat in a patch of sunlight and there we watch it die.
we agree
it’s dramatic.

     we know the rat will again be a rag.  that the teeth
having been something else
will reappear
as teeth.

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

the theme of this person-to-be is footprint.  for years I hated my figure and for years I went undetected.  I had female heroes both sad and sad reboots.  for a fee one told me I was fleeting.  the fee included the thumbtack moon my heel had liberated from a schoolchild’s diorama.  we come as babies so none can ask us what we remember.  the theme of this person-as-is

is mouthpiece.  her red phone has been tapped by those my blood is filming.

sister
she wore
one white sock-

a night light
in that hotel’s
dark.

safely, without miracle.  a process the locals call grandfathering.  I want to tell the devil about hell but we’re not on speaking terms.  in visions I nuzzle the backs of angels.  I come to, upright, in the aisle of a private library with my nose in a book of debts.  you worsen.  I believe in order to have something I can stop.  god is everywhere.  I have a job.  a boss heavy on atmosphere.

     I provide ambiance.  no place to raise a child.

because I can cool his head with mine.  

-

he clucks, I cluck.  we are deep into our clucking.

-

from space.  the same way it comes to animals.

-

that other thing is between you and god.

-

item:  a nicotine patch, from father’s arm, in the event you find yourself playing with dolls.

-

item:  we don’t have that kind of time.

-

object sadness, not yet coined, is a peephole I can’t put my finger on.

-

colloquialism is more than extra love for the hatchet.

-

there’s nothing left to swallow the tip of his tongue.

as intended
we do not
immediately
know
it’s a mock
resurrection.

our fathers do not suffer
magicians
lightly
and hoard
blindfolds
as if they are low
on photographs
of women.

our mascot pig
is a ****** elephant.

the fragile boy shepherds his pulse
among bigger bodies and into
the bruise and into the bruise’s
unkissable bone, that grey
area where holstered
his invisible gun dispenses
with metaphor and metaphors from
a pep rally
held in theory
in a stranger’s garage
where his brother’s
accidental birth
expired in his brother
who himself
was part bruise
part cream
added to the bruise
by a father whose lightning
stormed
from the hip of god
during a dream
had by a full
gallon of milk
mother held steady
for hours, back to back,
above the form
of it unstirred

in the bed
of a soundman
who has privately

gone to bury
his own

we’re at that point in the conversation where someone is called someone to protect someone’s identity.  we’re in a sparsely populated room where last time I checked you were having a party attended by people who believe people **** people.  I am currently the sobriety story you beat into your kids until the neighbors take them away to a toy train that circles someone’s sister who is convulsing on the carpet to free her braces.  your dee-jay brother is being a **** to everyone but me.  his song makes me sad the rest of my days which are also the rest of my snow days.

a better pill would be a pill that could abuse you before they arrive.  instead, I threaten my mother with my father’s suicide.  it is not easy to avoid the vice versa at the end of this sentence.  it is not hard to be limited by the imagination.  by the verbal assault that dangles you below a dog whistle but above the tooth of a beast.  I impersonate those I love and those I love are impressed.  don’t think me untouched.

the baby’s appetite for its birth is jaw-dropping.  in store for god, we have nothing in the house.

memory
has all the time in the world.

     just when it’s getting good
the book of Genesis
begins.

I stay for my father’s voice.

three babies are carried from church
for crying, or one baby
for crying
thrice.

     slanted paths
of ash
pass in front
of a screen door
like tiny crows
absolved
of warning.

in house, an old man
places himself as a witness
to the controlled burning
of a wooden
porch swing     and misremembers
his best friend
as his best friend god.

when it comes to humoring
me
by name
my memories
draw a blank.

I had a daughter
and three
sons.

my hands
could’ve been
the hands
of an umpire.

in the untouched church
of suicide
was the untouched
church
of *******.

it’s like seeing
a television
on tv.  the comedians

and their failed
sisters.

do your thoughts
still take
the temperature
of god?

your cigarette
slant

for the stone
in your mouth.  mother

she ******
the blood

of towels.  made I

from a lesser
stone

two birds.  things, like singing,

that didn't
happen.

the boy
is today
a bloodhound
tracking
the lone
acolyte
of his mother’s
handprints.  as another,

he once
led
a horse
to a woman’s
watermark...      

/ give suicide someone to widow

I would find in my travels sometimes bones.  one, in a brown paper bag on a bus bench.  or another, floating beside a bellied fish in a pet store.  as it was key the bones did not enter my thoughts, I began taking an online course about preservation.  I hadn’t expected logging in to make me less of a transient.  the stress of having to remember a password brought forth desperate visions of my daughter being broken by nothing and casted by men who for the sake of visitation had been made peripheral.  the stuttering nature of her struggles wore on me and I had to abandon the bones for these representations of peopled hospital rooms your nostalgic primitives call photos.

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.

it is always a neighbor of ours tries to schedule amnesia and gets put down for suicide. it is always me on a farm machine hasn’t moved in years writing a poem for mom. it is never a mediocre ventriloquist marries a better.

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 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.

the twinkle in your mother’s eyes alerts god.  my thoughts are abused.  our fathers live separately.  will we live, also, alone?  surely.  to any inquiry, I am checking for survivors.  it’s a premature periphery, but a baby just floated by in an incubator.  the townspeople look like candles on the water.  chase is a kind of following.  the upper body of the minotaur lost everything.

[premises]

he is cheating
resurrection.

his baby is a baby
in that it tries
to leave

a note
for god.

his mother lets it go
on the roof
of a hospital
about the kids
she saw
*******
in a grocery
cart.  

proof

yearns.

~

[root]

I left quietly
the pet store
of haunted animals.

a drifter preaching polyamory
took mental note
of my appearance.

a man was my father.

~

[outer life]

they’d say his head was hard because it was too small for god to kiss.  when he’d come into town, he’d leave with children we’d not seen except on posters.  his welcome mat was a napkin spotted with blood from a Q-tip.  save for the tiny matter of Jesus, our parents gave him little to do.

~

[the bridge]

let me not pray
for this man
who captured
on film

for the last time
in its environment
god’s bed.  let me not

be consumed
by this man’s return
to the inexact art
of home.  let me obsess

instead
over a portrait
of myself
trapped
by aging, let me grow

to my waist
my hair
might it burn
might I then

to the accumulation
of sight
and sight’s
potential

bow

~

[captions]

underling animals
in times
of quake /

slight
swellings

in brain
of maybe
one mole

bottled
now
for sea /

if on a baby
your hands
would be

so cute

but as
an adult

you glove them /

world as wheelchair
the wheelchair
from which

god rose /


as sporadic
surges
switch on

the sink’s
disposal

pull thorns
from the rabbits
you dream

~

[I saw my youngest brother born]

I saw his mouth.
I thought he’d ripped.

~

[the small]

I acquired you as an infant from a gentleman who needed parts for a radio he planned to invent.  listening to his radio was a long way off.  you sat early.  you called me mother before I was ready.  if I was good, you’d play a videocassette to watch it dream.  I looked at stars and you were a toddler.  our life was life on other planets until the gentleman returned.  he said he’d seen satan in a space suit and that satan had given him signs of ****** abuse.  you were not unrecognizably depressed but did start a fire in a photograph.    

~

[cure]

the dark, the ocean.

I have two reasons to believe god
has not stopped creating.

-

our father
had this phrase

all in good time
psychic

-

my anger has gone the way of the milkman.

his doomed child
with her piece of chalk.

~

[bait]

I didn’t see it
like some kids
saw it-

pain
as clay.

a swat here or there
to the back
of a mother’s
mind.

a man who took a bowling ball
into a closed garage
had no sadness
I could pray
over.

...Santa smoked on the roof
of my father’s house
while I
with a noiseless
stomach

touched
that hunger.

~

[how to live in the country dark]

toss frogs
into a fire
your father made.

find a woman
who’s abandoned herself
to being led
by a stick, let

her blind
mongrel
lick
your palm.

bury a handful
of gravel
call it
the moon’s
grave.

hide in houses
hidden
from road.

make at least one friend
whose night vision
is a glass of milk.

double your body
by walking
drunk.

~
[irrevocably child]

pressing
a cigarette
into the double
absence
of what
has become
the snowman’s
mouth
the woman  
begs
for a light…

it is a thing done softly
in a larger movement
of searching
belly-up
the nowhere

that sober
looks funny
alone  

~

[tell it to my brother]

a widow
with three hands
has ten
doomed
acquaintances.

god’s tacklebox is too light
to carry.

think of it as your ascent into feminine indifference.

think of your son as the incurable
made
thing

on the factory floor
of my son’s
use.

a male mime
bites into
a bar of soap…

***
is a bruise
in a blizzard

~

[mendicant]

this doorbell
is for the inside
of your house

-

to some
you’re the giant
you’re not

-

hearing isn’t for everyone  

-

a fog-softened man
with a baby
might experience
a sense
of boat
loss…

-

hurt

what you know

~

[crystal]

a foster boy using an alias teaches my son to shoot.

it’s the tooth fairy on a sad day finds
under my pillow
a handgun.

you know your father
is a night owl.

in the book of mild love, a capital letter cares for a typo.  it is not a caring one might do for a newborn, the sick, or for a felon who as a newborn was often sick.  this is also in the book of mild love, which tells us how to care.  

my father was arrested on the tarmac but not before he’d placed the miniature of our city beneath a grounded plane.  when interrogated as to what he’d accomplished, he said he’d successfully placed a miniature of our city beneath a grounded plane.

my father calls his legs hangers-on.  it is not a joke to him like the joke of his botched execution.  my father gave me the book of mild love because he thought it was the best joke-book I could get my hands on.  in the book of mild love, I am given an example of a suicide note and asked to scan it for typos.

my mother’s password is entrepreneur.  it is spelled backward and written across the front of her lazy eye’s lid.  in the widely read book of furious welfare, it is recommended that the initiator of any staring contest be you.  she looks at me as if I’ve thrown a tiny pink bird from a moving car’s window because I have.  I was chewing the bird to keep from laughing at my brother, his nose in the book of I am on drugs.

my father won’t teach from the book of ***.  not once does it mention the bomb.

wherever they are
they are washing
soap

not there when your mother
cries into a poison soaked towel
to a childish god
while kneeling
before the remnant heat
of an open dryer.

not there when your father
by the sound of it
breaks your arm
pressing it into
the shrunken right sleeve
of a shirt that should fit.

not there when your brother
spooked by a deer...

    not there when my body
stops the procession

that one might be held in its image.

gender control
has highlighted
a single
glaring
omission
while population
control
has issued
one person
per
god.

still, she tolerates
the fetus.

in this context, we are rednecks for free association.  we worship the male witness of the bone burying dog.  we wander from working televisions to say amen and to call it typical the baby’s behavior.  god is a perfectionist.  fasting a weight class.  we have each of us a bad hand briefly that drops a baseball.  our bald spots pass as bite marks beneath squirrels in the priesthood of sleep.  there’s meat but we’ve had better.

when out and about, we bury baby brother’s head in big sister’s chest to keep his acne from strangers.  when inside, we rotate setting leftovers in front of our only mirror.  my growth spurt happens overnight.  I start telling stories of a woman dentist and the family she doesn’t see.  baby brother starts to bite.  his parents buy a hairbrush and work together to thieve a single paper plate.  someone gets too close to the face of god.

no bigger
than your hand
a robot
nearby
is dying

in the bed
of a mouse
a mouse

with an odd
belief

beep beep
in the world.

odd, this park.
no pigeons, no
mothers.

tall babies, taller straws.

a man
in scrubs
on a bench.

I've brought bread
and am suddenly
quite sad.
  
if you can't picture
how sad I am
think of your friends
leaning

into the door
of a cane factory
where you've given
notice-

think of them eating this bread.

as the elevator operator
who cut
my grandmother’s
umbilical cord

was dying
in a stairwell

my son
ate
without assistance

rain notes

I go through a whole pack of candy cigarettes while listening to my father shower with his clothes on. the bedroom window is stuck and sister is on the roof. I can’t move. mom is my dream of suicide

skipping
a generation. thunder my gutted church.

model

scarecrow
the shrinking
man’s
nest

–

the ugliness
of horse
corrected
by deer

overture

curfew, pregnancy, dream-

this plan
to stop
talking

secret**

I occur only to the animal that wants to die

in late years, the incarcerated man becomes a vessel of facts not widely recorded.  he puts them to paper for the daughter he’s imagined by.  on the outside, the daughter settles into a calming routine with a perfectly good father.  her mother abuses animals with such regularity the family name becomes synonymous with the fight to end recidivism.  on the whole, the man’s youth is something he said once and forgot.  a real wife was humanly possible.

whose stripes
mimic
prison bars
behind which
a man is on fire.

it comes up in conversation how his dogs, ******* and ******, were killed during a bout of baby-proofing. biters both; like mirror their mother. she is only god in that we sent her a son. he says this, and also this: the act of swimming is a creature that comes to my knees. we bring him the raccoon. no raccoon, no moon.

when the note was partially read
on-air
we thought
in unison

hell

I could’ve written
that.

by now I’ve done everything I’m innocent of.

that’s either an angel
or it’s your mom
doing a hand stand
in nothing
but white
knee highs.

cloaked in drug use we were not led to believe, the twins
were spared.

though a first born
god doubts
his recollection.

there are two kinds of men.
one is your father
who says

there are two kinds of men in the world.
the man who marks the door
and the back-up
he has to live with.

the note is from your mother and tells you your father is coming to town and plans to bring you to the circus. the money is for your mother from the last time he visited. the poster has never been unrolled and was given to you by a friend of your father’s you had no doubt was the strongest man in the world. the spoon is for those times you have no heat. the dictionary is fairly new and belonged to your brother. he circled the word phantom twice, ****** once, and underlined strife. presumably before he died. if you happen upon my half sister you can give her the picture you’re going to use to recognize her. I’m looking at it now. it’s definitely her.

as a woman
she was a boy
after her own
heart.

as a girl
she had an overdeveloped
process addiction
to program cessation
programs.

as a poem
she knew
suicide
like the back
of her hand
and with
two palms
took a bird
to its bones.

her knees remained
the earphones
of god
and god
an unmanned
analogy.

shortly after 5pm
an amiably
grey
spider
pauses
on a piece
of copy paper
in the lap drawer
of a man
behind
on sadness

blank yard signs

radios

of the independently
poor

their babies
slow
in getting

up

doll, prayer mat, microwave

/ more time

the bicycles were given a much needed space and a few people went to their stomachs in a representation loosely based on the most elegant sentence ever written about a groupie     and even a baby helicopter with a hidden remote flew over the open gifting and caused a bit of a scare with a firecracker     our fear of it cowered the elements     but to disarm there came a cake in the shape of a church bell     the rain would ruin     but at the time to see people outside     being little ramps     of privacy

~

reanimation

it is nothing

compared
to the sobbing
of worms

~

outhouse

the bathtub is full of ****

it wants to be
an egg

~

frogsong

depression

decorates
a bird

~

miracle

a bunk-bed for sister’s hair

amnesia occurs as often as god.  we speak as one to one who puts a value on value.  we assign an indirect loneliness to pregnancy and present ourselves to prison populations as a way to avoid hitting the pregnant.  like you, I become my own pillow when back in the school days of my tornado.  yes I place myself in a song and you place the song.  reading remains a new form of plagiarism.  I am super psyched about the babies.  I don’t want to mess up their traumatic bonding.  hypervigilance is a thing.  like you, I know I’m close to what I’m ghost of.