(on February 5th, I am planning to send hard copies of my newest publication earth is part earth and there’s a hole in the sound I made you from to those willing to read it and to those willing to either say something about it or keep quiet.  if you are one of the first five individuals to send me a message with an address of where you’d like to receive it, I’ll include you as one of the individuals on the February 5th  mailing.)  

here are some poems from the book:

-

[from the book of waiting]

what is it
dissolves
in the mother’s
foreseeable
presence?

faith
a flashback
god
is having.

-

[voice]

*** as something that has an end.

evidence of god
provided
to beings
of proof.

I will offer that I had children
because I myself
could not
shun
authority.  post-harm

pick a word
you’ve heard
me say.

-

[trick blood]

the bottle takes what it can from the baby’s mouth. the stirring motion delivered to the hands of a misfit prophet. the knowledge of my father’s people that god is too old of a lover to get satan’s attention. the silence my mother kept quiet for. the second afterlife of a single breast.

-

[male music]

in the creek of tomato silence
where my father saw
what it was
god
could not eat
there lives
a tiny whale
fooled
by emptiness

I mock blow my brother
who has just put
a snowball
down his pants
after claiming
it
a bar
of soap.

we are as high
as our father
is gay.

if we go in the barn
it’s for the Ohio
breeze
to begin
the joke
it abandons.

our mother is openly sad.

I always ask my brother which eye he wants to open in the dark. I have a foreign notion of how to be homesick. I have a son whose body won’t tell him he’s well. I see the face of god as an idea gods use to evoke intellect. as a girl, the man of few words found himself surrounded by things she could describe.

[story]

on the shell of my brother’s first turtle

the inscription

campfire
at the end
of the world

~

[impact]

as for the tree’s supposed headache, I don’t want to give it teeth.

your twin has tried to leave a dream.

~

[his body a small sorrow]

the proofreader
of grief

~

[akin]

just born and his bones go south.  cigarette, first-aid, airport.  off-brand invisible ink: a memoir.  I want knowledge to be sadness.  cassettes went away because we stopped recording god.

~

[you were born the day your body came for you]  

photograph
what you cannot
lift

~

[white movie]

death’s dog wouldn’t **** a pony
says the man only men can hear.  

repeat after me
says the baby.  
nothing’s publicist.

death is not coming, sister.  brother, death has come and gone.  though a strong sentence may effectively convey the deprogrammed whim of one born to be all brain, poverty has no more a puppet for these strings than you’ve a doll to force feed.  I remember a woman who misread my closest as my closet

grief.  do you still have that mutt?  its messengers mourn the naught they deliver.

blood starts in the nose.

my body is on other things.

dream
is to boy
what taste
is to tongue.

her go-to
word
for hangman
is god.

eat little, not less.

I offer my shoulder to the mouth of little baby angel-bait.  my wife is touching up the secret room we’ve rented for a reptile to display its sadness.  I am worried my son sees no point in knowing whether or not a slug heavy enough to snap a mousetrap has died.  to be clear, a sound twice as long as my ears made its way to god in the photo god is using.

as overcome as I was to be gifted a hospital gown, I had nothing on the angel whose brain / for visiting the eye / was banished…

we are the dead
we’re here
to return

it wants you to hold it.  it plays dead.  its mother is bombed into her mother’s mind.  I think of what I did to the chicken’s head and how it stopped the chicken.  how I know something I’ve never seen is beautiful.  I can’t make out what my father is pointing at because he believes it’s forgotten the both of us.  I grant my brother his exile of proximity.  for example, no chicken is overwhelmingly chicken.

the man slaps himself
so hard
I am sure
the mirror’s memory
is for show.

god is god because he continues to believe
he willed himself into being.

my boy drags his feet.

rest the eyes
above ground.

I am in the saddest grocery
waiting with my mother
for the happiest
bike repair
to open.

the head deformed
is what the head
would want.

it takes illness
three seasons
and absence
one

to go
nowhere-

explain to my ghost

how my son
has two-

there will be other kids

a weaker
doorbell, a dog

underfoot
as we fry
in church-

horror and recognition are functions of the past. I brought to your campfire an empty dollhouse. I lit with eyesight a haunted cigarette. it’s not your baby, it just can’t flee.

sick, my son says he has an eye behind his eye.  says he can see it.  at night we huddle in separate corners of his mother’s bedroom and take turns pretending to be on watch.  mornings we cup the mouth of our dog and shake the rocks into our palms.  when my son’s health returns I will need some help throwing the rocks, but for now I can manage.  the city has gotten closer but it’s a secret I’m okay with.  

     scary how almost nothing can happen.  when I was a kid I had a neighbor boy to poke holes in and a brother to give him to.

touch is a sign of weakness.  my father opens his mouth after speaking.  meanwhile, miracle, it occurs to me in separate car accidents that bringing me to my son in god is less an undertaking than that of arming the man who transports a stopwatch to a cemetery.  do we live the lives of those experimenting?  beauty is not alone.  suppose it knows.

my quote is a missing person.  I was taken from my home by two hoods I presumed were men and they walked me to a place new to them, old to me.  there they argued over the god I had told tell no one.  I strolled home as one does when stalking the unmanned spotlight of one’s own death.  I thought at first this would be its story as without it I am nowhere’s only sponsor.

exit music for stop-motion departures.

a son
a dying breed
of circle.

can light
perfect
a shadow?

you begin to draw me and I begin to hurt.  I know what a brain looks like and I’ve heard what I can only say sounds to me like many rats worrying as one to keep dry.  maybe I can tell you about my ears by telling you about my first bike and how its handlebars grew and grew.  did you know your grandmother broke nothing but was always on the lookout for pieces of glass?  anything she swallowed she swallowed to strengthen her knees.  some of your drawings seem to believe what they’re peopled to believe.  is being childish something melancholy can attain?  I rode to where the school had been before it was moved.  wherever it was, it was empty.  a father carried his trampled child up a slide and a mother identified me incorrectly by the back of my head.

part
sign-language

the centaur
attends
the mermaid’s

crucifixion...

some of my hair

was cut
for being
blind

some of it
became

a scarecrow’s
purse

at thirty seven, I’m not far behind my wrists.  I am aware I put a certain strain on my sons.  I say to stones I’ve skipped my share of stones.  where fascinated, I am frightened.  the story of the foot that fell asleep then broke.  of the vanished schoolgirl on the wrong bus, beaten and pulled under seat after seat, taking with her

     that perfect weight.

I dream in longhand. Watch slasher movies to control death. No I will not be doing anything for my mental health. God was the first weapon meant to heal time. We don’t all live here. Blood reads but not with all this blood. Be last, be small. Hide your stomach from emptiness. Check your children for bones. Hairdryer for pills.

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.

loss goes unnoticed.  

I made for you
a scarecrow
from the textbook
violence
of a midwestern
poltergeist
as lightning
took a step
from the baby
I crawled
beside.

be
not memorably
young.

play, image, your joke on heaven.

infancy, you destroyer
of nuance

use
the whole
animal.

he can’t tell a baby
here
not from

a hole
in the ground

a white sock in father’s stomach

the rabbit’s head
we use
for mowing

saying
instead of chore

char, mother

saying
it’s his
her blood

sleepwalking

the voided twin
created for duplication
trying to eat alone

our food
tastes
the same

its touching
backstory

still intact

after seeing god, my brother climbed a tree and wouldn’t come down.  he thought himself serious but then had to ****.  I took off my pants and made him swear.  it was dark or no one looked.

-

I carry the larger-than-child child up steps smaller than my feet.

-

in grade school, a particular person would ask me what my hair was made of.  over time, I have come to call that person people.  

-

on the day I hit my head and start to walk, my son swallows the harm there isn’t in letting god talk.    

-

the cat is all the instruction one needs to **** it.  perfect, it seems to care that suicide is traceable.

as a boy, I envied the vague.  a man at my father’s table told this tale of a rabbit struggling beneath the belly of a dead dog.  not wanting to see the rabbit, I covered my eyes.  that night, my sister put me to bed and let her boyfriend sing me to sleep on the phone.  I never ran away from home because my dream of doing so seemed more like a memory.  when mother tells us she is looking at a picture of our father

we know it is any picture has him in it.

stupid
but as a kid
he feared
whatever
he didn’t
eat
would know
he left it
outside

–

hey kid
that man
there
he took a pill
to make
himself
smaller
but it only worked
on his hands
now his wife
has to give
the baby
its bottle

–

try missing
god

if touch is all it can manage

the hand is poor.

I am the new face
of baby
doorstep.

when lightning
has emptiness
to burn

feed
the fasting
doll.

[a memory]

I roll from my mother
my father
sketching
the ghost
of a stone

~

[unrisen]

this oven
this chapel
of the television’s
right
to privacy…

which paw
for mom’s
mosquito
bread

~

[straying]

mom takes photos of things we are near.

a piece of gum that won’t bleed.
a plastic bag from the head of a carousel horse.
the circle’s dark past.

as children
we adopt
certain forms
of adaptation.

as lovers, always
an item
away
from owning
a pawn shop.

as adults
of parental
age
we become
our parents
those veterans

of apparition
improv.

it is behind us, now,

the telling

that had
god
being sentenced
to heaven
for tracking
his own
paranoia.  

it is with her, now,

the little
bundle

blessing
of nerves.

up ahead
the women
are bathing
the stray
that bathed
a bullet.

it is lost, now,

the black egg
once rolled
by an unattended
populace  
to the front

of a parade
where
as a boy
I dressed as a bird, tore off

my beak
to smoke.

the haunted clock
in tornado’s
house

the weightlifter’s flower

the rabbit’s
bliss

the lamp
eating
its bowl
of light

they don’t tell you
when you have a baby
about the shrinking
babies
do.

we bought a smaller bird
but few
noticed.

we made friends, women

with lights
on their shoes, men

sold
on mittens…

we sent nudes
to the author

of babies
eat
sleep.

our mailman
he caught us
dancing
and threatened us
with an audiobook
on baptism

and that
was the end
of mail.

we sold headgear
we volunteered
to sell
headgear, put an ashtray

on the roof
as lure
for longing

that
of memory’s
narc…

christ is a boy armless in christ.  eats his corn

his teardrop
corn.  

thinks he’s been given
by *******
the power
to spy
on a fish.  thinks god

is part
food.  hears

from a demon
touched
by snowfall

that the boat
is real

but first
starve a crow
that is blind.

I go with dove to high

dives / I am on

the pill
the swimmer’s
pill / for nine

months
I’ve hidden
a rabbit
from no one’s

hormonal
christ

firstborn
I came
to soften
my brother.

before my mother knew how to sleep,
I slept.  father

was a thing
forgotten
by something
real.

lighten up, dream, we’re light
on crow.

the animal
your favorite
you won’t
become.

the hymn

in all its
cephalic
worry

has me thinking
bathrobe
while saying

statue / why

always
this dream
I join
others

to find
a small
body / death

had a spoiled
child

smearing mud on her **** to cool the baby.

trying
to burn
dirt.

like a scar, some father
reciting
the same
verse.

we keep missing each other.

I’m no you.

my favorite sport is god.

my father
drops a bomb
referred to
as common
on a place
he makes
famous.

in the dream, I had a baby and left it there.

behind
is the part of my life
you’re in.

where do we go when we live

do aliens
have shadows-

inquiries
I field
from the child.

it rained in Eden.
this leaf is most like
a burned
hand.

put my good hand over the sun

be bright with absence

track the path
of a bullet
by swallowing
the small bug
meant to flee

with eaten
shade

the scarecrow loving puppet put a pop gun to the head of the soundman’s lamb.  

-

my last meal
was my mother’s
voice.

until he can recall being born
he will be an introvert
made
to endure
the props
of forgiveness
in the nowhere
theater
of his health
where a noose
hangs

from a showerhead
and live shows
are for the past

I pour soup into my father’s mouth so he can find his teeth.  when he passes out I tell the carolers he’s gone to the city for a blindfold.  my girlfriend likes it when I send people away.  I was born there.

my dog dies
and I take
its place.

because he could be anyone
I use my dad
to get laid.

christ had two sons
his daughter
ate.

20 times
I kiss
like this
my father.

the cigarette
the worrier’s
flashlight

the past
a widow…

deserted childhood, electric eel.

if poor
put mouth
where mouth
is

-for Jacob-

when I say there are four of me, I want you to imagine you can board a paper airplane to resume your life elsewhere as a supplier of matches to the triangle of vague nations.

-for Noah-

when I say there are four of me, I want you to fill equally exile and absence with a color you’ve seen twice.

-for JP-*

when I say there are four of me, I want you to put my face to a face and imagine two hands shaking beneath a god with six.