the boy on the stairs won’t be around much longer.  three days time he’ll choke on a paddle ball.  a detail will be passed around how a passerby tried to save the boy twice by pulling the paddle only to have it slip and snap the boy on the nose.  sadness over it seems impossible.  

not yet, but a tunnel under me as I carry my adult daughter from jailbird to jailbird collapses and I lose her to walking.

before my mother’s eyes were terrible things
she believed evolution would inform her next move.

it’s trash day in ghost town. mock scar, prop mirror. mom wants to make a footstep. dad a mouse. dad a flower. sister a hand with two tied behind her back. me a sound. brother is on his stomach trying to catch something from a snake. from god. the private life of recognition.

my father jokes that he is only attracted to gay men.  

that my two left hands
must’ve rubbed a balloon
the wrong way.

I know if I kiss his bald head
he’ll ask for a comb.

you’re angry that they’re beating him while you’re awake.  to qualify for the reverie of picturing a river it is necessary that you recall the correct number of infants that set sail.  the basketmaker has dedicated her life to relocation.  she leaves behind the ugliest bells.  your son has never been ill but acts like jesus surprised that he is.  the television powers down every time a stone turns into stone.  dying would mean dying before your brother whose blind wife means to live only as humbly as her dyslexia allows.  the *****.

instead of running the orphanage, your husband has been going to movie after movie.  he no longer acts like a child in bed.  his crying seems attached to sadness at both ends.  his mother keeps calling when he’s not home.  she’s never met his father.  his father calls from the same number.  you want to tell him but need his son’s blessing.  your own kids are full of woe.  they laugh so hard about it their poor stomachs skip meals 101.  when you visit the ATM it’s to put money in an account for a friend who married up.  it’s not you on the cross where your water breaks.

this must be satan’s emergency room.  where so withdrawn I declare myself in need of stitches.  where my mother empties vending machines once a week hoping to see me but dresses like a man her father knew.  where paperwork is accepted from females only and files one as pregnant or twice as pregnant.  where my son would make an airplane but for the heat in his hands.  where my feet grow toward the ocean until I am all feet and my face goes straight.  where satan himself does what he can.  fills the bedpans on days of inspection.

I am pretty like people.  to jesus on the cross this poor man brings umbrella.  he is still bringing.  still poor.  I am like his woman.  a child climbs onto my back.  my back is bitten and used to being behind me.  I drink from my shoes.  madness is an extra cup.  I know wanting all the rains is like not wanting one abusive boyfriend.  know mouth is mostly mouthpiece at a father’s funeral.  to all men a certain radius is hereditary.  I talk in cycles.

she lives alone.  from this, one can gather the things she owns.  1970s ****.  she is pregnant.  a week ago she went into town to pick up some new phrases.  while there, she slipped into a house and beat a sleeping child.  our deeds are weary not of a dog barking or of a cat hissing but of the overfed fish.  my belly button is how the marksmen touch me.  she thinks the child’s father followed her home.  she’s about to watch the videotape.

mark my words, wrist

-

with god
as my impression

mark

insomnia  

-

the mood was very ******, the mother invented

***
to scare
the kids, the mother

drank
cologne

-

I keep having the same baby

it comes
with a dream

underling animals
in times
of quake-

slight
swellings

in brain
of maybe
one mole

bottled
now
for sea-

if on a baby
your hands
would be

so cute

but as
an adult

you glove them-

world as wheelchair
the wheelchair
from which

god rose-

as sporadic
surges

switch on
the sink’s
disposal

pull thorns
from the rabbits
you dream

the woman knows she isn’t the one her angel wants.  god says we can do this all day.  I chase the car until it runs out of batteries.  mother needs little.  an extra night to sleep on the loss.

the yellow sea will take you away and the yellow sea will bring you back.  in between the coming and the going, your father will speak to your mother about the tales her brother tells.  the one about your father being born to carry a ladder and later in the same your mother born as well and with her an extra shadow.  the two about her brother himself insisting to multitudes how on its mother’s command a tadpole swam into his ear.  the unfinished few about who I am.  the thrice changed account of the man with three hearts just like Jesus.  the one he hasn’t told you about the visitor that eats tongue but is never hungry which is also the one about how we know what it eats.  the story of two men hating the same woman over and over until they can close on nothing but frog-like delicacies.  your favorite where he becomes your father and becomes too sad to release your least.  the hated woman whose stomach is a black tire, the bits of which are found here in the meekest bull and there in a massive fish.

her first love
a clockmaker
in a forgotten
teacup.

her second love
she abandoned
in the topmost car
of a ferris wheel.

her third love
an eyeless
thief

who once emptied
the coins
from his hat

onto the counter
of a small balloon

shop.

her fourth love
left sugar
on her back, and a hook

breathing
under the coat

of her fifth.

to be completely dishonest

being told how much time a son has left

turns the body to hourglass
and bones to sand

-

rather, I know
my father    
disappeared
from his cell    

     rather, I believe
he was eaten

-

this is the cigarette you’ve heard
spoken about     in other

males.  that females

keep
enjoying.  

it never ends
and it’s not like thinking it does
destroys

male me
male you

-

what is death?

-

     but the second showing
of memory

the land very well of my tongue but I was asked to know the tongue of my land in the tongue of my land.  doc the veterinarian hired me anyway.  I was to myself in the dog cages and in their runs I would kneel and let the hose seize with water.  I was to myself in the sick and brick room fearful the slow cat would rent with its curl my stomach.  I was to myself when the parrot so parrot told me in so many words separated partially its upper bill on purpose.  was I dumped the dogs full asleep and half from a wheelbarrow into a pit and I in trouble doing it when we were busy.  was I would basket my arms upside down above three dogs a day at most while the needle made sometimes the back of my hand and somehow on that four dog day my chin such that it got me my funny talk and fired and I had to tell my home early dad.

a mirror keeps leaving me in the same toy. smoking allows grief to imagine thirst. I have a mother; she misses yours. god

sees turtle, thinks mask.

brother builds a time machine from trigger warning ****.  brother puts his little earthquake to bed.  brother swears on god’s jawbone he’ll pinch a baby from a pouch of tobacco.  move for move, I match our mother’s stillness.  my eating acts alone.  a symbol for leaving a mark.

he has the look of a woman with a place to die. he grounds my father with a sickness reserved for flying creatures. he owns nothing. his people are a hospital my mother calls one too many. his prayers replenish absence. he counts in the garden an invisible populace whose dreams my dreams were having.

I am differently
afraid
of each
cigarette

-

thematically, father hopes

to operate
on a clown

-

compared
to his

my hunger
is having
a flashback

-

wheelchair, oh

to its dog
door
bliss

your sadness ran as a midday special on nailgun accidents in my area.

if I stay in one place, my mother will die of sleep.

ideally, it’s the image I have of realism.

I am at the tail end of being but a child.  aloud, ghost sounds to me like guest.  the dog looks to be eating its paws with its hands and will do so until my hands are gone.  influenced by the simple living of trauma, mother’s handwriting emerges to document itself.  brother he is on the dreamy side of becoming the product of a his-and-hers overactive realism.  in his own words, father is moved by one thing and by what went on in it.  a shadow picking up litter, I love him both.

increasingly violent.  I have this image.  it is broken.  physical.  like a being.  ask your mother.  practice.  not on your mother.  she will feel left out.  let her be.  like a mirror.  I have this image.  it’s blinded and has been since the moment it was.  I have this father.  builds to nothing.  builds and builds.  I have this friend you’re the uncle of.  shakes his right leg as if his foot is stuck in a bucket.  there’s no bucket.  he’s all yours.

you will know
the hoof
of satan’s
chosen
deer
by the way
it glows
when any
female
announces
from the seat
of a stilled
tractor
that she
is pregnant-

you will be the age
of your mother’s
baby bump

older than your father’s
knife

and lit
by the grape
in god’s
mouth

slicked
with sadness
a branch.

the skinny
legs
of rain.

into the wood
a man
whose daughter’s
hair
is a ghost
fighting a ghost
for her head.

whose daughter
has not slept.

such cures
the town
talks.

put the sick
every morning
on a different
porch.

use
the same
nail.

if one is awake
**** a crow
or *****
a stop sign.

how many fingers, fork

will hunger
lose

-

I am the trap
god sets
for my kids

would that we couldn’t speak
until our bodies
began to fail.

the healthy want me to clarify
what I mean
by fail.

what I mean by speak.

by the time a god brings itself to bury the legless creature that in its death rises to the top of the aquarium’s dream, there are already so many things fish and fish-like, there and not, scoring

for proof
of god…

the grave of my grave is thought

brother
I fear
we've made
such a deal
of Cain

he believes
he threw
but a pebble.

Distance makes touch in the skull of an angel

Beheads god in front of a star

Poetry didn’t save us
And we weren’t smart

the knee of hers I don’t kiss

this region
long
on religion

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

repetition
is never
more
than one
poem.

there’s no future
in this pill.

my mother’s head
is full of heads.

I haven’t a volleyball
in a pond
to **** on.

in the words of my son
a sailor     is lost at me.

I go on correcting oddities
in the brain and in the muscle
of a jack
in the box

as a cyclist
champions
hunting mourners

to keep their numbers down.

when in poetry she is referred to as mother she uses it to show others her fatalism has regressed.  on par with such beliefs as voice recognition and voice recognition technology.  she knows a dream is a good reminder of how someone looked.  when detoured from the road they’re filming on she manually rolls up the driver’s side window to say curse words.  a tire rolls by.  then a second tire called ahead by a bus on fire.  adventures in adoption.  her diary keeps a brother.

15% off all print books and free mail shipping at Lulu today with coupon code of MAYMAIL15

~

some poems:

~

[raise god]

it’s a nice enough baby with an inability to emit. the adult world worries but no more than than it does for the television’s volume during bouts of ceasefire. parents divorce or parents agree on the same support group. siblings form a circle around a one trick pony. some believe the jack-in-the-box is broken while others believe it’s patient.

[taunts]

death is never early. take the first bite of every meal in front of a mirror. chase the kid while pulling a plastic bag over your head. invent a sibling schoolmates blind. know poverty, know moon. shampoo the elderly from a distance. baby no one. they have looked like hell since before you were born.

[pathos]

our fighting
determines
which of us
is more
sonsick.  

relic child, town crier.

I take what I’m given, beating.

cerecloth, snow
on snow
before and after

it buries.

me of course
as I position
myself
to hum

above
a basket.

me as I marry homeward
and kick

ball, stone, stiff
bird

stiff bird in death
doubling as
the rat
of an angel

yes
kick
for reasons known
to another’s

pet cobra

skin to skin
in an unmarked
life.

[costume]

we’re here to ****** the head of the boy who put a clown’s red nose on the girl playing jesus for stopped traffic. if I spoke your language, I would tell you.

[poor lighting]

a plastic doll with a human right hand distracts us from the parrot’s empty cage. we have been writing in unison instead of eating. our poverty is so advanced it keeps a fake diary and a real diary but hides them in the same spot. we are dying in two of our mother’s arms. our mother is elsewhere repeating after the man who does our stunts.

[collapse]

how
on a clear day  
my father
is the face
of absence.

how what I mean
cuts the finger

my mother
sips.

how porch blood
is not the same blood
the body
faints with.

how copperhead, how rattlesnake, how lisp

says I myth
my sister
who is still

vanishing
to shoplift
god

from the thunderstorm
we gave her.

[southern treehouse]

as my sister
inspects
her *******
in the white
piece of paper
we both
refer to
as the one
and only
ghost
mirror

I fry
god’s egg
in the plastic
shovel
I took
from a sandbox
shaped
like a coffin

and shiver
like the psychic
who with
the controllable
sobbing
of her hands
gave our seizures

to animals

[bait]

I didn’t see it
like some kids
saw it-

pain
as clay.

a swat here or there
to the back
of a mother’s
mind.

a man who took a bowling ball
into a closed garage
had no sadness
I could pray
over.

...Santa smoked on the roof
of my father’s house
while I
with a noiseless
stomach

touched
that hunger.

[how to live in the country dark]

toss frogs
into a fire
your father made.

find a woman
who’s abandoned herself
to being led
by a stick

let her blind mongrel
lick your palm.

bury a handful
of gravel
call it
the moon’s
grave.

hide in houses
hidden
from road.

make at least one friend
whose night vision
is a glass of milk.

double your body
by walking
drunk.

[outside the body it is always procession]

I may have lied about being pregnant but I know my ******* kid.

her father quells *******.

ants are quiet.

-

his teeth make sense.

our yell is I’m gonna shoot you in the blood.

-

elsewhere
is a light dusting
of downfall.  sleepily

legal

are the sunbathing sad.

[crown]

i.

a hand towel
over the lid
of any
stubborn
jar-

a mother to a father
or less frequently
a father to a mother
I don’t know why this is
but either way
a gentle admittance

to couple

as if passing beneath
the singing voice
of statue…

ii.

that stage
where a baby
is all
head

[mendicant]

this doorbell
is for the inside
of your house

-

to some
you’re the giant
you’re not

-

hearing isn’t for everyone  

-

a fog-softened man
with a baby
might experience
a sense
of boat
loss…

-

hurt

what you know

[crystal]

a foster boy using an alias teaches my son to shoot.

it’s the tooth fairy on a sad day finds
under my pillow
a handgun.

you know your father
is a night owl.

[dog years]

the longer
I grieve

the more

~

below is an unpublished companion piece {shuteye in the land of the sacred commoner} to my recent chapbook, infant*cinema (**** Press, April 2016)  

as such:

~~~~~

[shut-eye in the land of the sacred commoner]

~
poetry and god share the same quick death.

I’m on what you’re on;
the eighth day of the world.



~
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.



~
existence is the wrong inquiry.  

I was destroyed by an angel

for having
taste buds.  

/ a pinkness

went on
without me.



~
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.



~
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.



~
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.



~
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



~
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…



~
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.



~
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…



~
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



~
death
my way
of saying
goodbye
to god

-

had you lived
or enjoyed
amnesia...



~
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.



~
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 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



~
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
birth
built…

-

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




~
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



~
into something from his childhood
a man
is born.  never

far off
what crawls
her way.



~
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.



~
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.



~
/ 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:



~
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
******.



~
when
did your caterpillar
become
a syringe?

I want to hide the clothes I’m wearing.

something touched
is something
mourned.



~
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.



~
praise headgear, worship eyewear.

adore nostalgia, forgive

memorial’s
constant
vigil.

say god
three times, then

say mirror.



~
this is what you mean, kiddo

what you mean
to a bomb

/ it doesn’t help god

that god
is awake



~
for what
does the torso
pray?

the cocoon is music
to the mannequin’s
ear.

sister
she ain’t
been calm.



~
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



~
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.



~
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.



~
putting the meat
back together
in an unfilled
pool

we yawned
at the same
time / brief

painless
the unmothered

between



~
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



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

that, and when did you know.

off duty
lifeguard
with cigarette
his nerves
shot
reading
an obnoxiously
cursive
letter
about
how a baby
moves
in its very
still
mother

the house knows I’ve been sleeping in my car. my son opens an empty fridge. no one in the book has turned on a light. I am dying. I never got to make a habit

of this. I love more

her adopted
clock.

the less said about god’s addiction to brevity

as heard
by the angel
of birth

death
with its collection
of misfit
bookends
has an ear
for birth
if birth
is speaking
on the loss
of an empty
headed
photo

-

is god going to **** it up

the addict’s
spotless
campsite

yes

in the dream
I hadn’t been
using

brother drinks water enough to shock the devil.  on the inside, he’s all doll.  I shake him for show might our sisters travel in pairs.  I used to talk but had to close my mouth when the soft spot on his head kept my mother from her toes.  it’s the second stone that really lands.

i.

satan is livid.  says the hamster wheel was a gift and asks you not to be fat on account of his nervous energy.  


ii.

     dear puberty,

the body of this letter confirms the messenger
is god.


iii.

thing is
I thought I’d never
see it again

     (I thought I’d sent it into her belly)      

even I made a hamster
noise

following a dry spell of imagery

my decoy at the gates of heaven

your illness
dreams
a kingdom
it cannot
people

     takes
to sky
and there
meets death.

tell me
they talk.

my friend is a cemetery.  his broken fingers are testaments to the boredom of wind.  do you write to yourself in prison?  your kid cannot scribble.  he tries and it makes him fierce.  I make heads or tails of him no matter.  your mother came to me in a bowling ball.  whispered about the dryer opening and out came a burning in your sister’s ear.  things are tense.  your father still cleans the sounds you make.

that none
should endure.

[childhood (i)]

the body of jesus
pulled from the sea

~

[childhood (ii)]

I am, in the dark of an unwashed submarine, kissing his head

like it had
a message.

~

[lost priest]

I come from a place where a school bus hits a dog and the bus driver barks and all her kids play dead

~

[poem]

remember to rub them, the hands of the slow learner.

and to say their prayer

the one for the bald princess

& her child’s
perfect
somersault

~

[each ear is an only child]

shaped
by a scarecrow
barber
known
to cut straws
for quiet
angels

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

i.

one helpless, one permissive
I made quickly
equal cuts

in the newborn-

     deep that they’d honor

my witness.

ii.

to pre-empt déjà vu
I tailored the newborn’s gown

to the debt of its body
with such fabric
I could not afford.

iii.

that it could sound check
the echo

     I named it child.

iv.

     renamed it whistle

for how the wind
picks up
forgetting.

for father


two men in their mid-fifties take turns cooking for each other in a country house.  a bucolic tiredness flattens the land.  one man says aloud *I’ll sleep when you sleep.  when the end of a thick rope appears on the doorstep the men tug at it and decide the chore is no burden.  they reel the rope into the house for three days and nights before nodding off.  once awake, the men can’t piece why the front door is propped open with a rifle they rarely use or why this or that vase is broken or why the piano bench has been moved.  neither speak it but it’s a helluva rifle.