a tacklebox in a prison yard

a wasp
from scarecrow’s
childhood, also

nostalgia

the forgetful native
indigenous
to absence

a collarless dog fetching a grounded kite

trauma’s original boredom

the search parties
wind and blood

acolytes of the short leash, light

has more
to say
than god / think of me

angel
as a hand
from a haunted
house

a smallness
that skips
a brain

a stuffed creature from god’s cage

-

sickness, the second person to forget my dream

the water here, brother, is flat. drinkable when it weeps.

what you hear is a mom moving her baby.

god / you can switch
him off
like a bug
in a coffin.

I saw yesterday
your daughter’s
eyesight.

I saw today something using its gums
to open a briefcase
and something else
its teeth
to crack
a beetle.

in more
than two
nightmares
now
I’ve been
towel dried
by a father
whose baby
was given
a brick
for sounding
/ scrapegoat

this word
at mirror’s
grave

by the time the robots believe in god, some of us want to be here. Misty keeps ripping her clothes off to make us think she’s cutting herself. I am not in love with her.

–

my son
his stomach
is a nightmare

–

Misty says making it hard is like pulling ticks from an owl. Misty says it is up to us to find the woman carrying the statue of her frozen brother.

–

a. act like a baby, not an indian
b. eat the way eating was born

to the man whose face can do things mine cannot, I give my son.  

silence has no creator.  pictures

of god
don’t sell.

the boy
in another
language
pays
attention

light
marks again
its territory

grief beds sorrow, sorrow’s
eggs
mostly
hatch

dream only
of discovered
things

the ******, day one:  I have every photo I’ve ever been in.  mom is a wreck.  her and the dogcatcher keep mailing each other the same knife.  death worries it will be made to visit the ghost it promoted.  dad lets christ use the oven.  I can’t get over this idea I have.  an entire language to mask a word.

hunger is a clock devoured by worship

the rabbit hole
burdens
abyss

“Everyone you see
lives somewhere.
How is this done?”* - Franz Wright

I am wearing a bomb and she is wearing a bomb.  we are going to the same empty place.

alien
to spoonfed
angel

three teeth
if that
into ceremony / how early

one must be
to not
exist

we’ve had trouble conceiving an ugly child.  the stray will come back when it wants to play dead.  name the third mother in Solomon’s nightmare.  places I’ll never be

I’ll vanish
from

in the not
dream
of deserving
birth

three
beakless
creatures

open
the mother’s
mouth

more
are coming
just

to observe

I had a doll
kept me
from believing
in sunburn, ideas

for the same
church

I had the longest dream

you were there and mom
was in your head

our pets had all gone blind

dad was bathing
a baby jesus
in the basket
of a bike

I began to forget
things, the toy

that ate
its young

for Kazim Ali*


two sons
share a pencil
then trade
ghost plate
for alien
stomach

made not
into a fisher
of men
my father
pushed off
in the little boat
of his wound-

so filled
the weeping bowl
of my mouth.

for Brian Dawson*  


god
to me
was any
word
my father
didn’t
know.

profess
to know.

your brother slips in the shower, and then down the drain.  friends, with other friends, get on a plane.  your mother calls.  she is angry that you’re not angry about not being made to scale.  you say into a curtain- one piece of red cake please.  today, you will make it to the top of a baseball bat.  father will make a little promise below his arthritis.  your wife will make you happy.  she will say happy birthday- it’s a model of the city you wanted to drink in.

said they had seen my father waving his arms and that he’d been eating something raw because it was on his lips and he was a different man. said that many were screaming their mouths onto the windows of the subway or dropping their heads between the legs of weak children as if they were to carry on command bowling ***** to the sober dammits. said they and said they so early my ear I had to put it on the table next to a spoon my father used quietly last week everyday of it. began god his forgiving of bears being seen downtown and began I to get very hungry to hear my father mock blowing mock broth to keep it in the bowl.