the three point line
is the madman
spots
a cigarette

return won't have me

infant, the sooner
than expected
search
for god.

I have this baby I’m not afraid to use.

you pretend to shoot
and I’ll pretend
to fall. we’ll make a day

of never talking.

the missing crow of thorns.

in the not
dream
of deserving
birth

three
beakless
creatures

open
the mother’s
mouth

more
are coming
just

to observe

walking
a blank
stretch

to rival / the disappearing /

wilderness
of starvation

/ the bride
of reflection
with her dog
made of sticks

a boy in a diaper
covered in flour

a sadness specific to elevators

cocoon
on every
menu

my nine toed baby rolls its tongue as if to speak for the sock on my hand

The food we ordered is gone. Suicide, weight loss, and snow. No one takes Ohio with them. The baby burns itself on a baby it wants to recognize. The void is a bird dreaming in the airway of a ghost. Praying turns me toward prayer. I hurt my son but I hurt my son in front of someone doing the wrong thing with pain. There’s a way to tell god that we think about death.

it speaks of me

the past

like I’m
not here

...had to put aside
for the moment
that the sick
angel
was in fact
an angel

it needed immediate attention

it said god would know
he’d helped it

not someone
you want
happy

the body
a saying
from birth

I am not done / I carry my son

/ from the bathroom
his mother
died in…

death
didn’t see
a thing

the knee of hers I don’t kiss

this region
long
on religion

/ the house
she’d have robbed
had her insides
changed

mom needs a jar of jelly to call the priest.  try as he might, my brother can’t seem to get his tongue stuck to the oven door.  my hands are here to hide the fact I’m wearing gloves.  dad snaps three pictures before passing out.  the voodoo dolls of my invisible babies have passed each other underground.  I am thinking of things you can do.

I was born
impossibly born
addicted

to the sound
of footsteps.

god

loves the woman
who makes the bed
of his last

believer.

a suicide
from my past,

a surprise
party
for death…

/ if I lose my voice long enough
will they let me
wear
the mask

suicide took the person she was named during.

I am old, here. a klutz abstaining from revelation.

bald as any
lover
of maps.

I watched television for three hours then went outside for what seemed like three more.

I’ve been feeding the kid in different areas of the house.

falling asleep is forgetting to eat.

the naked mailman
he didn’t die
after all.

the church has begun to remember the world.  

melancholy has its own mosquito.

yesterday, the kid wheeled himself in front of the fan and opened his mouth.

things burn where they land.

I wasn’t born but have to see for myself.

the unlit candle

desertion’s birthday

-

the voice
is not god’s
that experiments
on children

but ask
away

-

the dog we buried
is sometimes
on fire

watched
we think
by our sister’s
cooking

violence
is the only body
that takes a lifetime
to bruise.  

I know this guy
so to speak
calls his ****
god’s shortcut.

I can’t reach my hands.

if I had an animal
I’d poke it awake
father
and cut myself
in front
of your mother’s
dream

you can
in fact
eat your silence
forever

-

I don’t want my food
to tell a story

-

talk to me
of light, of mother’s

milk, talk

is for the hungry

-

ask my hands

-

it is always dark
in the baby
you’re having
and in the dream

I’m

her handwriting
knew
it was being
watched

and what would you have me imagine?  a change of tense in a tale of abuse.  a baby licking the palm of a doll.  a spoon.  a robot’s broken arm.  a chalk outline of a worm.  hunger’s tacklebox.  our allergic sister’s suicide note.  a calf eating its first canary.

the babies my father held.

the hell, the world’s
largest.

the parts of the house
that caught fire
in two
moving

vans.  the bully

mother poisoned
in the dreamy
media
of religious

thought.  the daring

suicide, the doubled
god.

pocket
the small christ
of lover’s
grandmother

have, later, a weak
child, a sibling
of some
nobody…

imitate
when alone
at the grave
of that clumsy
cat

the sound
of a sobbing
tacklebox

that, or a seven day vigil for the one he destroyed

a one-legged boy
and a lame
bird

in a roller
skate

providing for a child is like trying to hide one’s mouth.  the first thing god said god said in the dark.  before I brought my son, I couldn’t place him.  things from this world make me think of another.

the accidental possessions
of a disillusioned
proofreader
include:

/ the asemic
pawprints
of something
swallowed
by an invisible
hypochondriac

/ paper plate
the shadow’s
last
brainstorm

/ puberty
the broth
of wound / & this

the hair that pulled me through

how horrible it must be for god to know he can read.

we’ll take them all,
these animals of disabled children.

an orange cat
touches
the earth, this

my dad’s
dream…

and this, the nail’s:

a palm print
on the hoarder’s
window

for the stomach
served
as is
to the ghost
of god

the under
born
fight tooth
and kneecap
in the same
spiritual
darkness
took mouth

mine
for a dead

ear

came first
plastic
then
immoral
loneliness
then
said a whale
to a whale
scratch
your eye
with mine
we’ve seen
for weeks
god
pass
for silence
in the apple
death
of brief
eels

/ does the demon
know
I’m the same
clue

because her son can see the future, she is not yet born. god matters to the discovered.

had I known
they were details…

psalm alas, kid-

I located
for nothing

you drive a clown car into a crowd
it is how you mourn
the accidental burning
of a doll’s
body-sock
and this I understand
as a city
kind of thing
as a way to eat
darkness
among friends
darkness
from a stomach
a way to lose
blood’s password
yourself
in bread

my son
has enough
light
for god’s

cheek.  in pain

I am over
the moon.

to see a stone
as ruin’s
pursuit
of aftermath

one must share
this dream
  
of arriving
on earth

to pray

I’ve been alone longer than you’ve been alive

-

it
that sees double
is not
a ghost

-

puberty left me for the doll this eyepatch belongs to.  (I did not deny

-

a talented god

forgiveness
was always
assault

/ visions mutter
in the ghost
of my stomach, film

is low
fruit

sadness
has only
the followers
it takes
from melancholy.  a dog

a dot
of a dog
see it
master
the secret
farm.

it goes to bed hungry
with nothing to show
for the work
its creator
consumed

it learns to read
by talking

its ugliness
is believed
to have put
in the sleepwalker’s
mouth
an extra
tooth

pulled
from your life
of trying

could be
god
is god
because
our world
is the least
of his father’s
worries

for mother*

the first thought
you have for the world
beats you
to the punch.

you are so light
two people
have to be in bed
with you-
one to hold you
and one to hold a feather
(that way)
it won’t matter
who falls asleep
second.

no one is in the room
you come into.

your mother is alone
in a desert
at night
looking
for a black dot
when her water
breaks-

then, gospel singing
in your gospel-singing
voice.

fascinated
by the ear

children
I’ll not

kiss

image
made
no beast.

think of it-

death
was human

being ours.  being her memory’s
unsent
reply.

the less said about god’s addiction to brevity

as heard
by the angel
of birth

she highlights
an entry
on hair loss
in the cannibal’s
diary

–

dearest echo, language
has a country
it can leave

–

one holds the owl and one pours the paint

/ knowing
how to dream
they choose
this