for Mary Ann*

there are more dolls
than people

remember, daughter, our jack-in-the-box

how it studied
all kinds
of music?

pain is religious
grief
is not

some mirror
waiting
for my skin
to crawl-

some noise
being made

some holy
noise-

some terrified toy

with its toy
lover

in sound’s
blindfold

here she is after being kidnapped from her cage.

it doesn’t matter what you write to a soldier
overseas.  I can’t wait

to lose faith
in your arm.

my little ghost kept its baby.

a spider on the ceiling
in the bathroom
means father
fill
the tub.

your mother stood on water
before she learned
to walk.

something about a fly
speaks to her, the way it

enters a thought
to leave
a message…

the wolf in stork’s nightmare
speaks dolphin

what do I miss

my blood
your collection
of pea-sized

pillows

a letter, silent

dropped by a word
into window’s
bible

–

cot, diving board, empty pool. southernmost

search

for earpiece.

–

medusa

her headless
horseman

Q: what do crows eat?
A: they don’t.
Q: do they eat stars?

-

a fight with my brother

ends

when it’s my turn
to fake
my life

-

as a language, our food spoils

or mother
makes
the same
dish

-

where does my tongue die?

my seven year old son keeps putting his hands in his diaper. evangelist.

worry is no teacher. birth no language and mouth no age.  I tell you there is a comedy passed among the lower whites and I’ve heard them boast of taking blood’s coffin to the grave.  I moonwalk in a poem about violence.  am abused by animals for buying local

from the claustrophobe
her neglected

astronauts

it was born in a bath of milk when there was milk to burn.  it drew with daylight.  when asked for details, it pulled a shadow’s tooth.  we took it to a movie, a war movie, where it made its first noise.  its pain went everywhere.  it sold, it sold until it ran out of clothes.  its mothers had fight.

in the house that doesn’t go to heaven
my father lives
the life
of a stowaway.

tell the tornado how poverty has too many gods.

/ the walls have ears.  I have

my collection
of roaches

wrapped in foil / someone

will take my word
what firewood
was.

in which my son dies for the few hours I’ll have with god

of the body
I would rather
be
punching bag
than funhouse

in the hour
of things
or a thing
for hours…

-

I am not silent
bud did
from my father
inherit
the alphabet
most women
use

-

we meet
the same
beginning, recall

-

memory
had its mind
made up

I don’t have the temper my memory has.

skin cell, star.

a mouthful of the flood’s
haunted
soil.  an entry
made by a god
at seven
days
sober.

overseas, another ant
in the darkness…

no one told me
you were sick
but you

be clear.  preserve for me the myth of white male melancholy.  we put a cross

on the moon.  we gave

hell a hell
that does not disprove

a godless world.  in the origin story

of my father’s
parvenu

unease
we

mid woman
came up

with woman.  

     I am not made

of touch.  I am made of yours.

25% off all print books today on Lulu with coupon code of LULU25

~

my most recent self-published (Lulu) works are ‘shuteye in the land of the sacred commoner [& other poems]’ and a compilation publication of my last four works called ‘FOUR’, which kind of gives away the ghost.

please checkout my Lulu author page if interested.

~

some previous poems from my self-published (Lulu) works:

[segue]

the feeling
we’d not
been here
before

–

doom’s little hiccup

–

my brother
dead serious
that we pronounce it

hick
gnosis

~

[footfall]

a newborn wants to be a hand.

there’s the dream I have of heaven
and the dream
god lets me
bring.

my boy
has a crow
for a backpack.

~

[domestic inquiries]

the *** of the first person in hell

the number of animals
giving birth
in a field
where emptiness
burns

the logic of
if ax to tree, then scissors
to kite

~

[the explanation]

my brother the mud wrestler wants to know if we’re any closer to finding our father. I examine the droppings and say someone is feeding you in your sleep.

~

[ataraxy]

it’s a bit early
to be
reincarnated

son, this illness

it takes
our death

immediately after I left my baby sister in good hands to deejay for my brother’s above average loneliness, she was struck in the head by a rock so small she thinks it is still looking for her brain.  my brother blames me for this as often as he doesn’t.  he knows it is common for my sister to get ahead of herself.  when she is not telling us about the people of heaven, she’s telling them about god.

i.

his hands looked as if they’d been born inside a tree.  his **** as if god had thought twice about burning the entire stick.  who am I kidding.  find that ******* tree and have its baby.

ii.

my body was so hot the stretcher caught fire outside the pig pink temple.

iii.

what’s left of the human wall are the feet of the human wall

says mother
to the family
of the secret
wig.

on the life of his mother

loneliness
was the spell
he could not
recall

our prayers go only so far
in marking
hypnosis

we say infant when two things at once warn a symbol

we call it bird
what was done
to the bird

we plate crows from black market microwaves

burn a wheelchair
to mow
the lawn

the child you won’t have because the child hates surprises.  the story, your mother’s, of the pillow that struggled like an owl.  the werewolf, humble, and afraid of clowns.  the ramblings of a newborn.  the twin boys of Cain.

I pocket the white root of my enemy’s fantasy and bribe my father with money for a lottery ticket.  I hear god say yes it will be the god of all.  it’s a good day and on such my mother swallows her brother’s morning cigarette and tries to get someone to kiss her neck.  on such my sister wonders deep down if her doll is wearing enough lotion.  I think to flee but know fleeing looks on paper too much like what it is.  the skull is the grave of the brain, the skull is the boat…  if other houses catch fire it’s because ours is done burning.

[a spider, worried]

this cloud from a father’s mouth
before it is ruined
by some kid
who’s learned
recently

her shapes
and not

to smoke

~

[levitations]

mom is trying to iron a spacesuit

car horns
they foil
hypnosis

~

[father with his stomach missing]

a fishhook left in a dream

a peeping
tom’s
basilisk

~

[lightning storms]

in a wedding dress
worn once
and haunted
by paper cuts

going
at her dolls
with a fork

the fish are biting and my father is wanted.

thunder the size of a seasick dog
has crushed
again
my sister’s
baby
for crushing
pills.  for every

hunchback
goes
to heaven

there’s a shadow
passed out
in a dream.

the bomb
went off
moved
and went off
again
mom

-

at birth
a mouth
is born
mom

-

I keep
popping up
in their pictures
mom

I worry
not
that your car
will slip
off the road

with you
in it

but that you
will think
it has

and arrive
on holidays
and at funerals
looking

more touched
than you are

night terror, the handwriting
of imago’s
child…

/ resurrection, a memoir

god
my path
to meaning
nothing

-

she had a sock drawer and a  pair of secret hands

the hardest time
with houses

-

what if the end stops coming

-

what if

from one cannibal to another

it is extra
this bone
from the horse

Moon
ate

one day my son is dying, the next he is not, and the next he is.  day four:  prayer is dismissive, but welcome.  whose past is how we left it?  body is delivered twice.  beginning and end.  nostalgia and wardrobe.  middle eats everything.  it snowed and I thought my blood was melting.  could be the way you reason that happens for a reason.  I was a kid when mouse was a kid.  there’s no hope and I hope.  

-

my son’s weight is a cricket on a piano key.  it’s more than I can handle that god gave us god.      

-

aside:  we don’t come out faking our death, but are born because birth can’t sleep

-

aside:

I study lullaby
and lullaby
bruise    

-

it takes four juveniles to recruit his thumb.  his fist has been called:  hitchhiker practicing yoga in a junkyard.  I cannot visit the instant ruin that forgiveness creates.

-

sickness in the young is god’s way of preventing nostalgia from becoming the god I remember

-

I was beautiful but now I’m ugly. (now) being the most recognizable symbol of the present. this is the silence I speak of. my son says (more ball) and you hear (moon bone). he is very sick. his moon has bones.

-

the disappearance surrounding said event.  a horse belly-up in water’s blood.  see telescope.  also, cane of the blind ghost. magician, maybe, on a rabbitless moon- oh cure.  

oh silence afraid to start a sentence.  

-

in the photograph a fist is cut from, a kneeling family of five is putting to bed

the unremembered
present.  

-

traced, perhaps, for a terrible circle-

today was mostly your hand.

exactness
is a terrible thing
to impress.

in only words, I am sorry
your mind
works.

the image is not enough.
the image must already
contain
additional
deformities.

both hands curl
but also
turn the wheel
and thus
the whole of the car
into a dog
trying to use
a spoon.

when you are gone
you depart
the impartial
witness
and enter
witness
abuse.

I refuse to compete for those we’ve lost.

if god existed
writing about him
wouldn’t.

an animal lost in a little church

a hallucinating buzzard

snow
that light
replaced

how to grieve, how to startle
an echo.

the map is desired that maps the afterlife.

my only (is for a hope)
that bores
god.  

by now
my son
knows more.

it’s my turn with the body

/ I was thinking church
but meant
museum

/ brother is horrified

/ he’s made
this face
before

/ I was saying
in the oven
of the observable
crow
this hologram
is the butcher’s
pajamas

/ I was thinking
fork
that’s not
how telepathy
works

the boy possesses the silence of god

/ bring me the scarecrow’s parrot

Dear Ethel Cain

Ants don’t cry or think about teeth. I got this star tattoo that cost a lot.

father waits for the empty elevator.  in dream, he understands the holiness of such a place and takes to mourning the momentary loss of his interpreter.  he gives me a toy and blesses it with what he calls alone time.  his exact words are you have to like it before you’re asked.  you sleep on the stairs in a house you enter shoeless.  stay put.  the movers of my bed move my death.

the man without white hair returned your comb.  he said half of his dog is still missing.  I thought we could set aside some time tonight to be sad.  the kids will be here but if we work together I think we can make them believe they are not.  the man agreed to wait but then proceeded to turn me away.  so many have it I fear white hair has become the norm.

Mother with her paintbrush and me with my fever. There are no miracles. There are no miracles because of what miracle does to memory. When I fall on the ice, ache takes one of my hands as a shortcut. Never reach god.

the fore-
cross
becomes head
with blank
look
the smallest
blank
look
trying to swim
from a face-

my tongue is heavy
in the dream
like a burden-

the crosses
flanking
become shoulders
of man
afraid
that I
entirely
fear-

but there is a tunnel
dreamt into
mother
hillside
that is not
finished
that from
I emerge
where from
I went
to confess
myself
attached.

I show
for the fleeing
your cigarette
attends

-

a butterfly
is at first
a butterfly’s
ghost

-

for the face
of god
I admit
I’m torn

-

go dog
catcher

white

a bunny my brother hadn’t fed began elsewhere in the opening line of a friend’s memoir.  I ran with a lollipop in my mouth toward my father who could sell a shovel to a mermaid.  my mother ****** her thumb and so taught by example how to become invisible to god.  your son slept while you were spotted looking through a widow’s viewfinder at each of the three places he’d wished into being.  a child-torn child made room in a body bag.  drugged my elbows.

as for the infant
he ain’t
gonna hurt
himself /  

to quote
god
is that

how I sound

the zombie
sleeping through
communion, the love

coma

has
for death

as my mother took up the inquiry into what had died, I was made god.  father pretended to be my ***** and praised me for putting him in good hands.  my sister gave birth to a very large head.  what’s the first thing a baby does with its body?

I am a dark spot
in the ocean-

     mother
she presses
down

     if I had legs
I’d want them

with a sock in its mouth

suicide
the birthday
ghost

/ having heard
of the shadow
animal’s
ear
for the hand
puppet’s
collapse /

passes through
a wall
into a room
where a balloon
eating out
a prophet
stops not

to hiss

the robotic jaw
lifting otherness
from a hole
in a body cast

no litter
of bewitched
kittens, no wild

crop
of soundlings
angry

at the wrong
life

my father
is like my father
on acid.

mother, she cleans
house
by hanging
a painting
of a floor
in the room
where the floor
exists.

the dog
is an outside
dog
dangerous
to some.

god’s alright
but escalates
quickly.

historically, I am the boy
my presence
requested, the great

stranger
who prolongs
the body
of my birth
and death.

upon hearing
that a man
has entered
the ocean
my first
impulse
is to be

off the top
of my head

as noiseless

as the suicidal
gender
scholar

whose tremorless
hands
had feelings
for other

hands…

my second impulse is to be as speechless as my third
and my fourth

combined…

     and my last
is my breath

mom works nights answering the phone for a nameless thing

/ which sister
gets
the strawman, or

a narrator’s
struggle
with pica

/ what example
we set
for sleep