where one can more easily
picture
the struck man
as a boy
obsessed
with walking.

three skinny kids, boy, boy, girl

beat on a fourth
and leave him
wheezing
in what they know better
than to call
but call anyway

     forest.  the beaten boy

swoons
into tree after tree
and loses
his memory.  

     he spends a few good hours trying to pin
the small shadows
of overhead birds
beneath his feet.  

he thinks there might be a girl
watching him, that she might weaken
for one

who possesses
odd powers.

the shopkeeper’s wife is named after the town she was taken from.  I work for no one.  when I tell her this, she gives me a gallon of milk she’s reported stolen.  three days pass in a house known for the loudness of its phone.  I meet a stranger in a park of suspects.  bread is the main concern.

if the unwrapping
of your mother’s
head wound
coincides
with
a tornado
sighting
chances are
you’ve heard
a crop duster
burn
in the dream
of a weary
crow

terrified
of baby
chatter

attack dogs
are asked
to understand

english.

a candle burns
for a father’s
restraint.

on tv
the gentle
******’s

sense
of taste.

each twin
slower
than the last, she spits

over my dead body

baby
after baby
out.

as news
of the massacre
spreads, the young
call it
mother

by word of mouth.

this is what you mean, kiddo

what you mean
to a bomb

/ it doesn’t help god

that god
is awake

after the mugging, my father was asked
to describe the assailant

a man with a gun
who looks like
he’s just seen
two
ghosts-

I am still waiting to hear about my son’s color.
he’s been in the bath for hours.
his pruned fingertips
for him
are a first.

I would rather come from soot
than dream.

employed
was the angry
punk
to recite
the warning
at the end
of a drug
commercial.

the thinking behind this was sound.
the side effect of this thinking

gave the punk
a tenderness
to his voice
none expected
his mothers

to notice.

it wasn’t exactly the voice of god
but from a god-like stupor
came god

to his son
who was his
and the punk

sang

a cigarette ****
misses its mark, the largest
head
the child’s
ever
had…

the shut-ins
meet their food
halfway

the angels
burn only
the books
they’ve time
to read

it snows, churchbell

snows
on the crippled glow
of an Ohio
cemetery
where later
I’ll brush
a white hand
from the arm
of a stone
cross

not one thing
has the devil
made a satellite
do

this house
is a disaster
in front
of the children.

when an egg breaks
we’re poor enough
to count it
before it’s hatched.

I tell my sons
to never
put a tree frog
on an escalator
at the mall

and to avoid
taking gum
from my mouth
while I’m awake.

I tell my daughter nothing.
she believes her arms
professionally broken.

my mother was the last
to be
put to sleep
in the nearby hospital
of the mind.

I couldn’t drag me away.

as a shepherdess

overly
reflective…

at what age does it become

this black
hand

a grey
tear?

-

it worries me

your use
of the red
fox

-

on baby
there’s not
a scratch

toothpicks

babies

a closeness
to captain
birdbrain

hard-on
amputee

toys

I am counting on my fingers
in front of a mirror
those I’ve known
who’ve died
of fright.

I am working the loosest brick
from the house of god
while standing on the backs
of two kids
whose father
borrowed
then sold
a crowbar.

I am telling my abuser
how to direct
with a magnifying
glass
the stream
of god’s
****.

I am charging the riding mower’s
battery, I am alone, I have a hair

on my head
for my son
to pull.

either I draw
from memory
my son
nuzzling
the only animal
he’s seen
or slap
my right
cheek, mosquito,
to make
a mirror.

waiting for nostalgia
to download
these portals
to the same
world
are lovers
born
feet-first

first

surely the boy should have seen by now his father hit a man.  a girl walk in on a television.  a bite mark on a baseball.  a bug-eyed nurse.  a dog on two legs.  a god on four.  a scarecrow on a diving board.  himself as a baby.  the band-aid

my dream’s
blindfold.

sister
she yanked
her finger
from the dream
of a dollhouse
telescope
and went on
to preach

-

(Cain is a girl’s name)

-

death
it wants
your son
it wants
the patience
violence
has

give me
the gift
of sorrow
the strongman’s
pencil

-

in the purgatory
of spaced out
animals, ****
on the short
straw

-

tell me I’m not surrounded

-

show to my brother
youtube videos
of our mother
sleeping
on her father’s
back

-

say something in my sister’s mouth

-

scrub me
from the shoemaker’s dream
with a rock
the rock
I deserve

I was a fish. it wasn’t enough.

–

we’re the founders
of absence. off the clock

–

like newborns

~

ideation

the prayerful **** continues beneath the unfinished oven psalm

~

retrospective

dollhouse
fly-paper

~

newbie

­corpse bread

~

when he stopped eating
the food
provided
the food
became angry
and impossible
to eat.

the food
provided elsewhere
became so calm
some used it
as a sleep
aid
secondary
to starvation.

I try not to think for my children, it’s hard, they are
delicious
children.

a premature
or christ-like
nostalgia
for the mirror
surrounded
by the nothing
I feel

(-)

it’s all in your head.  the newborn we had on a mountaintop.  the word it knew from memory.  its hand that stuck to everything but the dog our dog ate.  the cold our dog died from.  the tent we called aquarium.  that we filled with diapers.  that was never full.

rainfall as heard
on
or in
the house
of the child
sinner.

crying of lord.

the deep child.

her friends
are like rooms
actual
rooms  
with friends

in them.

as in
the discipline
of trees
a hand
goes untouched
and changes
color.

I am made mostly of trying to find my way back to bread

an imaginary pet
in the thoughts
of its previous
owner.

the left hand
the afterlife
of the right.

a muscle disorder
in a sponge
sized
infant.

the *****’s paper feet.

I know his-
and my son, his own-
strength.

there is no breaking of bread, no beauty
the eye
can carry.

maybe
when you visit
we are away
on heaviness.

god
in that
children’s book
was given
to rising
early- so much prayer- just three

families
in the world
when one prayed
he hear
only
theirs.

healing is not a story the limping enter.  

who writes about death
writes
to return
the trespass.

since last
we placed
his madness     on speakerphone

he has observed
over half the population
observing
the lesser
half…

he includes that he swims alone

that his lover works for someone
in the gag order department

that the act of naming     a son
is scarce

instead of goodnight, my father says he is putting away his feet.  instead of cutting my fingernails, mother has me wear her favorite gloves.  I am a child

but know we are getting by on the shelf-life of secret hands.  I don’t pray but if I loved god

I would put us here to impress him.

stick people
their hands
are lonely
at the same
time

-

in my son’s stomach
is something
from your seashell
collection

no matter how much I touch him
he’ll be touched
more, it is not real

-

but it is
the christ
balloon

from ear to god-bitten ear
you
are poison.

in my youth
I was quiet.

there, I said it.

the food is not a dream
but here it comes.

he is reading
a hardback
the corner of which
borrows
his eye
when she knuckles
him from
behind

     because
her voice
is changing.  his eye
returns
and with it
the voice
he thought he’d lost
to adulthood-

     lover  
to his father’s
hearing.

my hands miss me.
two aches
on a frosted
window.
I carry my son
as if he’s come
from the freezer.
he is life on the moon.

     hell on earth
stop treating
addiction

like it’s something
you haven’t
attained.

my friend approaches the microphone with a grocery bag on his head.  I don’t know how this will turn out.  not long ago he ran over a fourteen year old girl minutes after she vandalized a stop sign.  my friend has lived everyday since and everyday previous with the fact she survived.  I phoned his wife recently but she had already left him for what he calls a microcosm.  I am hopeful I can love what he’s done with his hair.  he sent me this flower for mine.

my mother steps on a wooden block
with both feet.

stepping off,
she announces
she is going
on a diet.

my father covers his ears
and gets shaving cream
on them.

he turns me in his hands
like a dish towel
then drops me
at the base of the tree.

I transport
god’s blood
on three
disposable
razors

to my neighbor
who

on a high shelf
has a microscope.

baby I'm sorry
my penchant
for last things

does not end.

god’s image has evolved.  at a certain point, you stop growing.  I lift with abandon from my mother’s back-and-forth with her orphaned single-mindedness.  harm comes to my child for some attention.  into poetry alone, the crow is ushered.  it cries unheard in a long take above the consoled baby.  I wave whatever like a shy prophet with a bad back.  you look for the spider while carrying its legs in a tissue.  one black hand is not my imagination.

I orbit
the idea
of an animal
not thinking
of itself.

to err
is hunger.

the field
where father
sold
from a grounded
helicopter

a fog
machine

to one
whose pregnancy
had not
ended / the field

where brother
found
in a ******
a piece
of chalk / the field

sorta
field

like

with its puppies
and its trash / yeah

there is something to be said
I don’t know what
to echo’s
first

love / the dizzy

spells
of deer

he says we are men
not because a raccoon
chased a bone
into the factory
of shadows.

he says it’s me
or the bag
of trash
and gives me
a knife.

he says before I was borned
we took
the same
bullet.  he says mouth.  

I kick
he says
in my sleep
and it puts
a belly button
on a bird
one
bird.

he says them animals
ain’t so wild
as a dog
in drag
and your mother
is the outside
world.

lipstick on a juicebox

was hell
so poor

the boy was shirtless, was pocket knife
and pentagram.

where I’m from
this is how
we
go naked.

to attract other houses
my mother stays in bed
all day
claiming upright
she is fat.

awake, I visit
the white limo
in the white
limo’s
dream.

the boy lured my daughter
into being born.  I wrapped him

in a towel
and buried him
beneath
my brother
who had it

coming.

to erase hell
from the window
washer’s
memory

father mustn’t

hurt
one by one
the poor.

I rarely understand what I read as I read it.  a horror movie with the working title

god’s wound
is being scored

in the mind of my unborn kid.  by the shyness

of my blood, not again.

in the midst of its most moving performance, the house courts a mother’s indifference to the make-believe called to blind its only son.  the old, so serenely full of chaos, are elsewhere.  a father communes with god.  together, they form a placebo of distance.  a room without a mirror attracts a room with.  my brother

(a suicide
watch  
on steroids)

wants his face to leave a mark.

before the brat kid
can repeat

this is not
the television
my father
writes for, it is my understanding

that such a child
belongs
to the itch
to have a child
disappear.  as I refuse

(to enter
the ocean)

I’m pretty sure god has put my death in a bug.

MRI, or the stickman’s

first
snowstorm.

a telephone called depression.

we can no more save
the alien
that died
for jesus

than we can write
the dog-whistle
bible.

I’m sad because I’m circumcised.

the scarecrow
has dreams
of becoming
a surgeon.

I’m no expert on sleep. I’m being followed

by a coat hanger.

ask my hand if it’s true that all the babies had to stay in their mothers to survive.

when dressing the disabled child in front of family

my language
is often
the one
I use

I didn’t know I was naked until I had somewhere to be.

can one get pregnant from being pregnant?