the father touches down to draw squares for hopscotch.  every photo is a photo of silence.  the mother, for the weird kid in her sunday school class, is sewing one sock puppet to another.  it’s a lonely job but no one has to do it.  the neighbor has just borrowed a hacksaw and, earlier, a box of cake mix.  her brother is the boy all have heard explain how insects are sailboats.  as for the babies, they’ve been put on suicide watch for the actions of a single lookout.  how nearness, love.

: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 mother
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


-


:***

two
as if they fear
a third


: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?


-


:abortion

beneath the highest pop fly on record


:divination

found myself alone in a ******* *******


:epitaph

easier if I imagine you are clothed


:angels

any mystique
surrounding
  a small town
   search party


:blood

this ******* from the reader of my palm


-


:terrorism

trading
back and forth
the dead
before they are
and after


:pilgrimage

one’s ****** recovery of a native alienation


:novitiate

I know my mother by the back of her hand


:drone

I don’t believe
in being
attacked


-


:chthonic

a prayer asking god to brush your teeth

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 am ruined.  I am ruined because I cannot speak without moving your mouth.  I am getting younger.  if my mother dies, I’ll have nowhere to go.  I wake up.  in the morning, I have one finger and use it to light the rest.  my muscles are whispers of a mass firing.  my father throws a well dressed mannequin from the fourth floor and disappears.  I wrestle it into the burning pile.  meat is scarce.  supplies a tiny church.

god went from wall to wall unaware he was god disguised as a graffiti artist.  renderings of my son on a ventilator adorn the moving city.  the homeless are tattoos that remove themselves.  I guard the outlying cross and go through the motions again of nailing to it the same madman.  my only tool is comfort.  in flight, a wasp carries something it’s not.

brother builds a time machine from trigger warning ****.  brother puts his little earthquake to bed.  brother swears on god’s jawbone he’ll pinch a baby from a pouch of tobacco.  move for move, I match our mother’s stillness.  my eating acts alone.  a symbol for leaving a mark.

feminine, she cuts bread in the dark for my father’s meal.  I sit on a piano bench and play no piano one can hear.  my brother fears there is no soup under the dust he longs to blow on.  two miscarriages away from god leaving her alone, I am allowed to listen to a beautiful voice.  endearingly, I was a fat baby on a flat land.  the three of us are unified by the same vision of a wound our fingernails close.  the bowl has kept us from licking our palms.

he dresses plainly and drives a car beaten up by a lovely in-his-prime salesman.  he draws disability to repair the memory he has of enlarging the vacation photos you delete.  he gets paid to be no one.  there are days that are not the day his check is short.

that I might long
to pine
as your mother does
for my father’s grief
I lament the loss
of my quiet desperation
by randomly marking
the pages
of a special
thesaurus.

they, as in they, say

     this is done so we might identify
     the defragmented run-on sentence
     that will keep your son
     from becoming a scientist.

perhaps a paper flower hides in the envelope it could’ve been.

invented for god, the topmost angel
definitely
proves

the angels below it.

the order of things
illustrates itself well
in the following:

     private / female / detective.

special to me.

even with her fingers in her ears, she can hear the toy horse whipped.  if we don’t have food, we can’t pray.  my father was hired for his quickness, his hands

to salt
the rain.  grief is a guard dog from the permanent circus.

to the readers of fiction

you can
with a hacksaw
save most
of your leg
and its double.



writers of fiction**

was a man
bit a dog
and lost a tooth.

was another man
bit a dog.

same dog.

wasn’t a day
went by
the two
didn’t wake
to the howling
other.

mother scrubs
her brain
scrubbing
hands
as dishes
prepare

the crow
in each
of its two
dreams
had
an arm.

father said
be
on the lookout
son

for the receiver
of an old
phone.  to this day

I ask god
because mom
won’t

how sad
can one person
be?

we let the phone ring out because it keeps the babies quiet.  we have this dance we do to straighten side leaning semi-trailer trucks.  the sports we play require that one’s sickness occur only when it’s run through the others.  we limp beside any creature that limps.  the great romance of a complete thought is something our parents plan to leave each other.  our father is two mathematicians who argue.  our mother says her feet feel as if they’re still in prison for what she’ll take to her grave.  our guesses mean little because they are facts.  at school we are voted on and kissable.  if you see us coming, *** is a small unplugged television on top of a small casket.  details belong to god.

the only vandal
the town
has

has just
welcomed
into the world

a baby’s
broken
ankle.

the people of the town
though not diverse

rejoice.

the wind
tortures
with a trash bag
its shadow.

the vandal’s dog
allows
a darker animal
to nose its way
between the knees
of nothing
clipped
to a clothesline.

god is the sighting
such tantrums
begin.

heraldic entry (ii)

god is the secret god wants us to keep.  I hold onto my leg because you cannot return without it.  children drop in on women men ******.  this, I share.


heraldic entry (iii)

we junk the stove by not thinking about it.  I hide my gun inside and then find you doing the same.  we survive and believe it’s a sign from television.


heraldic entry (iv)  

the wee sharpshooter is scratching his ear with a sprung mousetrap.  you tell me, listen, when I am not.          


heraldic entry (v)

the healthy son has a sick.  well I’ll be.  of all the implausibly hedonistic, god is the one who didn’t get away.

boy, you will think smoking makes a pearl in your gut.  there will be three doctors like writing shacks constructed from memory.  to each you will deny the existence of a one-way baseball.  prognosis is a curse.  when you are curled by infancy I will toss objects through a tire swing.  by the way I am your father no one likes.  pain is not the last room the world has.  to be fair, pain is the last room

with a toothbrush.  knowledge is a sick woman.  she takes out her breast in a snowstorm.

I had a thing for wizards and needed something to direct my toys.  I had a corrected overbite and a mold of my teeth.  many were tortured and some were swallowed.  I left my tools behind when I was born.  what passed through my parents came first through me.  if I was the word they loved, I was the context they opposed.

on holiday, privately
asking
if autism
is a trend

a sister
can be seen
beside herself
as one

whose turn
it wasn’t
to feed

the water

infants
by nature
are cryptic.

beset by symbols of worry, parents

become clear.

draw for me
a bomb shelter.

     name those already there.

our neighbors have gone underground.  I hear beneath me the beatings my son wants to answer.  there is no way to keep quiet but alas we are addicted to betterment.  bike lock and wheelchair.  the outsider’s visual aid device.  things invented by no one for the housebroken all.  my daughter puts words in my mouth and I use them.  my younger self is an alert.  think now of what you will say.  address the secret responsibility of having mice.  my wife goes next door often and comes back with the food she left with.  we eat for a week.  we blame each other for being so close.  our visitor has no ticket.  as the visitor explains, the ticket is god.  few pregnancies fit the bill.

I was male, 37 and some days.  had just dropped the kids at a house where kids can have cookies and god knows.  looking back, I shouldn’t have been driving alone.  in such a state I give women money when they approach me at gas pumps.  ten dollars is all I have.  two weeks is a plausible amount of time to be homeless.  the attendant he tells me she’s here everyday.  he’s the sucker.  I lie less when I have coin.  she’s in the process of an overseas adoption.  looking back, I was driving preoccupied with another’s woe.  woe adrift.  I rub my right eye and flip my eyelid and my car hits a kid not on a bike.  my car mourns but not in the driveway.  low, I look its way.  snow-covered.  snow-covered energy.  my wife sees me doing this then disappears so quickly into our room I think she has disappeared into her purse or into the book beneath it.  our children write about grief.  I complain it’s too short but can’t stop reading.

his father
has taken
like medicine
to sleepwalking
as something
they can do
together.

if you see them
man and boy
sharing
a robe
keep your
car horn
safe.

your mother is a fawn.

wrapped head-to-toe in toilet paper, he’d still ask for a cigarette. does this kid scream suicide to you? it’s not ******. the name of my animal

is shape. remember the face we saw in the bruise?

when a father
feels as though
he’s not
been here
before

the angel of near death
possesses

any idle
grown man’s
finger

and with it traces
a held
baby’s

outline
into the man’s
chest

for father
to not see

     / angel has no tricks

again, not unlike health

there’s nothing
there

a palm reader
with mouths
to feed
does
my mother’s
nails.  I overhear

I love
babies
but god
they live
so long.

-

my brothers will tell you
I avoid

capitalization

eating
in front of others

threesomes

-

who was it
asked

-

from whose memory were you erased?

purgatory
the map lover’s
heaven

-

tea time
and your doll
has no
belly button

-

is your blood clot
still

a cloud

as a first timer, or
a satan

in the moments
after
a different
pill’s
return

father gives himself
the once
over

to fraternize
as before
with the born
again

whispering
about baseball
in an outskirts
bar

two men
and a woman
the two men
call roughneck

their six hands
curled
for what
won’t arrive
in the snout
of a terminally
ill
dog

all promising
to name boats
gently
after boys
as it’s not
about her, no

**** is not a ship.

if the poor could keep to themselves, they’d have superheroes.  hey man, hey beast, them aliens already know what it means to be human.  abduction is the fingerprint of loneliness.  

-

what I teach my blood is grow up.  I put everything I had into ruin.  watch as my mother becomes your mother trying to be two people god can use to carry tug-of-war from a fossil.

-

my dream house is language.  you say it to my face how there are beheadings that have made a wish.  before my son was a giant, he’d somersault.  cigarette in mouth he would.

pray knock, mannequin

here is my daughter     she lifts arms

for a living, I’m not

around

-

when young, not so much losing the mind
as going elsewhere     with it

even then, you are not the first to arrive

-

the baby won’t shut up

I can’t find it

-

my father is poor / is missing

people he’s never
been to

-

when she was not    not yet     I cut a hole in her

for when she would need to see
the light

-

here is my brother
buying a coat rack
for our christmas tree

so it can double
as a coat rack

-

for the sake of your memory,
I wear the same clothes everyday

bounce down the school's
most narrow hallway
off kids

playing moth

eating behind the mirror’s back
it was all
hick lore
to me

a scratch
in scar’s
nakedness, a loss

of infancy
awarded
only
to the deaf
who dug up
the ears
of god
for nothing
more
than the sound

of depression
going blind
in the garden
of the hairdresser’s

hair

normally invisible, the husk
of vibrancy
has been outed
by recent
snowfall.

if you have a father
he is probably
shoveling
as if it’s the one thing
he has to do
before leaving.

it’s not, but it will do
until he has to shovel
again.

my daughter isn’t married yet
so I can safely say
she isn’t married
to a man
whose job it is
to inspect
poles
for tongues.

ice takes children from the horror film
of an everyday car.

accumulation is the only word
Ohio has
for hollowing.

headlights enter a snowbank
the way my eyes
enter a second
nightmare
wanting to see
what saw me
first.

in any weather
some of us
imagine the homeless
but can’t.

brother was fury ****** around by a pair of eyes.

god
the unsuccessfully
tortured
contortionist / was road.

bedroom was the trunk of a repossessed car.  mother
was not a single
speed bump.

hotels
were dry
land.  hotels

protested

abandonment.

silence was the liquid diet
of an orphan
whose insides

glowed
with traces
of paint
found only

in river.

father was the light that as a boy he was left in.
that as a boy
I predicted
in small amounts

by blinking.

boys we / had hands / an orange / to softly / pitch

girls they / had oven / mitts / their mothers / missed

dogs would / wait / sometimes / leave

days / like cloth / we’d shed / and meet

the anxiety of my body arrives
before the patience
of my mind

-

     my soul is a pop gun
or is
convinced  

-

          I Apologize

For The Eyes In My Head – Komunyakaa

-

for the aftermath
of witness

I don't sleep anymore.
I can almost see
god seeing
a child.
My stomach remembers every olive.
I have two phones
but no favorite.

mothered by a silent
shape my
mouth

he settles on a word not because it is right but because his exhaustion has developed an independent streak and has abbreviated its calling to* terrain.  *I talk with him about the origin of praise and he imagines a woman swimming solo in a cirque.  he looks me over as if I too am held together by my clothes.  any sentence I come up with begins ‘the female form…’ and ends.  though painful, I rub my knees.

(xii)

lost on crow

why star
won’t move, why woman

would make
hand signals

for satan’s
toybox

(xiii)

the double life of the man who’s not seen her baby devoured

/ the bread crumb
becoming
milk’s
nightmare / the way

to resurrection’s
hospice

my disabled son won’t have a disabled child.

for comfort, I have
this baby
being carried
prematurely
in the hand
of one
hoping to enter
an underway
snowball fight.

my hangover
imagines
again

a future for those I want dead.

my children were running and were plucked.  eyewitnesses were arguing over a comma their accounts did not include.  my brother was nearby and heard a voice he thought mine.  he used it to say that’s not a landmine that’s the body of my dad.  my children were running from me when they were plucked.  I was on fire which is coffee talk for surreal.  in actuality I was on fire just a little.  but my kids are **** smart, or were, in the sense they were needed elsewhere.

he need the good book in his lap. he can turn a light off. he is that bright and he is that extinct. it is his word on the kid. his word fighting. his word going down for a patch of nothing. it is our house scrapes the knee of god. our house chosen for its elbow room. anything unplugged is able to remain a secret. freezer, fire. the only thing in our meat is meat.

it is like trying to pinpoint the body’s first secret.  dear depressed woman.  unpopulated cities abound.  a screenwriter has a ******* and one is supposed to say what exactly train sounds trigger.  the human head passed around at a party.  partially, but also.  the human head my life parades with confidence.  past children sitting on their hands to make them sleepy.  into something even the third act would understand.

describe, in detail,
what it is
that turns
in the hands
of the wonderful
thing
you’re not.

yesterday, he caught
his disabled
son
trying to hit
a wheelchair
with a skipped

rock.  I still go mad

when my feet
touch the earth.

the boys
are not
taking turns
punching a snowman
in the face.

a car
slides by…
someone inside the car
snaps a picture.

     these Ohio winters
glaze hell
blind.

as I go
in
one ear
and out
the same

my brother’s kid
comes to
in the mind
of a beast
that
like any
beast

exists
as its own
memoir
of unreported

sightings
made
to chart
god

by sound

in a decaying spaceship

where the writer of mindless violence          
has been herself

something horrible
like something
you’ve seen

could happen
to a clothed baby

but
based on past history

hasn’t

and the baby
used
is used sparingly

and the baby not used
gives little thought
to its hands
which speak

prettily
about thumbsucking
to publicly
murdered
angels

***, make your face.

my father returned a clock
hair
fell from
a birthmark…

deaf as a housefire
my brother was *****
in two
tents, he pulled our mom

from a clown car
a tornado
died
in hell

i.

in the clay bed
of my son's brain
where abides
pillow

the print
of my thumb:

     flower, lie down.

ii.

to the maid
sleeping
in the foreign
house

of his
undecorated
death:

dream
of my attic
blind
wife, and what
she might
there

recover.