(-)

church of intermission.  church of the rolled-away church my fever follows.  church of it ain’t a baby until it spits. church of the lawnmower left running.  of the space you give the grieving horse. church of you when you die in my sleep.  of musical suicides.  church of the disinfected high chair. of the false bruise.  of how to become a balloon in the church of touch.

(-)

in the library’s dream, the abortion clinic is no bigger than a fingerprint.

(-)

this is me
praying
for a photo
of my father’s
last meal.

me

praying
to have
the allergic
reaction
my mother
faked.

for proof
of animal
suicide.

a mirror for my toys.  dirt for my brother.

(-)

and we touch to abridge doom in the bed of a headless man.  and we struggle to hear a father verbatim.  and we ask in a fierce wind a phone booth to please be a fireplace.  and a starfish consoles a handprint.

my wordless
my disabled

he was licked
at birth
by a deer

-

as a writer, the writer
wrote to me
****

-

writers

-

have you ever
tried to give

a stomachache


-

to a shadow?

-

it is not all graph

not all

grief, not worth

-

one’s salt

-

to speak
for any
content

that demands
form

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?

licking its wounds it is still an animal.

what does it mourn?

the lack reach of my tongue?

me / me I have

lost my sense of a peopled earth.

(-)

the robot is a ******.

the baby
it goes
from baby
to baby
with no
message.

-

I want your work to matter.

(-)

subtitles, ghost
pollen / I sit

facing
my father

he strokes
a large
bumblebee…

the baby contorts as if it might become a chair

its mother is saying

wind
I will pray
for you

-

its father is fashioning

from some god’s
idea
of a stripper
pole

a dollhouse

totem

-

the baby itself is nonsense

its head
bruised
by a rattle
would brain

a parrot

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

sister in the shower sings of taking a thunderstorm

/ smoking
was my way

is

of becoming
a woman / we know

a carpenter bee
as the simplest
foot
of an injured
possum

the woman had the suicidal absence of a man who’d just broken to his body that his blood was not the rooster patience devoured.  if I peeled a potato, I did so in egg’s hell.

emptiness
the inexperienced
****

wouldn’t know
the body
from two
failed
twins

-

I followed my father everywhere

into the fire
he wouldn’t
set

-

mama mono
the haint
of foretouch

had three
loves
that were not

ash, sloth

-

glacier…

-

if not heaven
then a place
in its
museum

I hear
again
of your
death, I do

the rabbit
math

-

I have a son
passes
for time

-

crayon
he says
or crown
of thorns…

his language
I try
to watch it

-

his blood

goes from soap
to mouthwash

a miracle

-

a miracle’s

mutant
reverie…

-

stick, stick, bone

-

for dog, I do
the math

she reaches into the same hat for the rabbit he’s made disappear.

I sleep and the dark takes me for the bone

lightning
straightens.

I am old and nothing brings me joy.

I did
good things
but I
was asked.

drunk
outside
of a dog
shelter
I am likely
to remember
a library
pyros
love.

my uncle
he is probably
still
west of me
able

to open
a bottle
with the mouth
of a living
frog.

for what
does the torso
pray?

the cocoon is music
to the mannequin’s
ear.

sister
she ain’t
been calm.

it was for healing the hand of the plain hand
that I
was touched / well blood

on a bread
crumb
massage me
a brainwashed
worm / well comb

all you want
the eyesight
of god / swallow

a hair
in the house
that birth
built…

–

can’t
this once
a thing
die
in the sanctuary
of its double

and what
would forgiveness
do?

my kids were never born. yours

they hide
from the number
of people
god
made.

when dead, I was not
a bird
yet
my mother
asks
what kind.

I can’t tell
by looking
if he’s seen
the future
or seen
the future
again. I strip

when my stomach
hurts.

when
did your caterpillar
become
a syringe?

I want to hide the clothes I’m wearing.

something touched
is something
mourned.

the power
came back on
the boy
didn’t.

I had my chance
to believe
in god.

the beetle was on its back
and the woman
unable
to **** herself
ordered
online
a rowing
machine.

mother’s garden, father’s ladder.

a black cat
where nothing
grew.

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

into something from his childhood
a man
is born.  never

far off
what crawls
her way.

outside the dream, I had written the most heartbreakingly clear poem about brotherhood.  inside

was this boy
was discovering
god’s thumb
is never
clean.  a boy whose mouth

was never
here.  all those I’ve met

I’ve left
alone.

/ had this hairbrush could halt hearing loss in hallucinations.  this theory that eve was adam’s mother and that god was born in eden for refusing to study virgins.  she had her facts straight and a dog would tell my son otherwise.  a way of coaxing both ****** and suicide to breastfeed death.  this bird that would go

like a showerhead
south.  a goldfish, a brainless calf…

hell is a book.

she reads it
in a room
that’s alive.

attic or no, I want
to miss
my father.

nakedness,

give it time
to recover

use a straw, hatchling

/ my behavior
in the dream

/ I was spotted covering my eyes by a dentist whose childhood had stopped disappearing.  how big is your family and who wears the mouth?  is it true your dad sold to a city gargoyle a spray-can of ****?  that your mom had no baby tired of being born?  that their suicides filled a madhouse with cubist maids?  

/ year nine:  your birthday spider is put on film for biting.  your sister takes one look at my brain and remembers what to feed and how to clean a cricket.

/ year eight:

when asked
I say
I see
on the floor
of a mudhut
a *** toy
having
a seizure.

I kiss the feet
you’re the future
of.

I am

, in the failed
body
of the creature
that swallowed
my thinking
spot

, still
a baby

this is what you mean, kiddo

what you mean
to a bomb

/ it doesn’t help god

that god
is awake

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.

it puts me on my stomach

this grief
you have
for the switched
at death

-

god’s color has returned

-

the male
animals
in the grey
barn

knew

-

first

when grief
was password
and not
codename

when gift
horse
was horse
fly

when baby
little baby
shorthand
went all
stork-****

(on who)

to remember
god

death
my way
of saying
goodbye
to god

-

had you lived
or enjoyed
amnesia...

putting the meat
back together
in an unfilled
pool

we yawned
at the same
time / brief

painless
the unmothered

between

what seashell does for ocean
my pillow
will

for hunger.

oh dream,

insomnia’s
wiped out
city...

is this
a stone

or the mating
call
of grief?

I am not the first to know how the world will end.

image

my second language, my lost

ghost / be alone

be like
a motorcycle…

your mother
she took an apple
from the wax
pig
museum / with what,

no,

where  

do you poke
starvation

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

I want to say it is yes yes

puberty’s
painted
egg, the island

clock, the genitalia

of alarm…

I want to say it is orange

like bees
like
not all

the hymns
not all

condoms…

I want to say
it’s uncooked

the body
patience

devours
and say

also
that as
a body

it belongs
to the father
whose nightmare, no...

a peeled
potato, a legless

chicken

not
for devouring
the mannequin
but for eating
the seeds, it was

(in a coloring
book
for cigarettes)

beaten

by a baby
a baby
could love

I jumped from a tree seven times
trying to break
my arm.

which arm
by morning
remembered.

/ a ******
doesn’t really see
his last
scarecrow.

/ if you open a pack of diapers
and some
are black / I have

four kids.

I dream
every night
one
goes missing

which means
by morning
the three
from the dream…

praise headgear, worship eyewear.

adore nostalgia, forgive

memorial’s
constant
vigil.

say god
three times, then

say mirror.

I am waiting to have the one dream
belongs
to my ghost

-

in heaven
the story
of my emptiness
has only
a middle

-

what I teach my dying son
is be good
to god
now

-

here are a few words
on context
and here
its haunted
postage

-

the past
is lonely
if someone
arrives

-

between birth and death

the gospel
of aftertaste

-

grief
has its own
cat

-

grief
has its own
cat

my son doesn’t want the circle he’s drawing to touch the circle he’s drawing.

the dog
is a heartbroken
wolf.

she checks her teeth in the door glass of the oven.

the egg is dropped
and the owl
******.

(-)

how sad?

god
with a shovel
sad.  

/ does your blood
know where
to dig?

by death I mean nothing was beautiful for a very long time.

that, and when did you know.

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.

the night she tried to eat her parents, her brother walked out of his diaper and I told a bone what the body made me do.  there was no name yet for the limb you were born behind.  no name for what the alien worshiped.  landmine

on the moon
we watch
what we are.

asleep in the pickpocket’s bed, the baby is a mirage.  

I’m so fat
I’m fat
in the dark.  I compose

at my lowest
a crucifixion
story

from the basements
my father
wired.