a dog is not barking.  father, no mystery.  mother is telling a woman that what the woman has is a child of god.  I’m in my room like the sort of thing exists in certain parts.  ****, doghouse catalogues, the animal that saw god finish.  my real friend has imaginary muscle control.  I want to touch him but am not sure how much my fingertips have.  my brother’s sanity is how a baseball bat makes it onto a crowded subway.  in the dream, my father irons my mother’s back with his palms and his palms are scarred.  in my friend there are magnets.

I am reading
the book
that keeps me
from palm

-

during your pregnancy
an interactive
apathy
prepared
an alternate
witness
for the witness
to eat

-

I liked
your poem
the panther’s
boat

hunger my contraceptive

blood
my wristwatch

someone to boil
the mannequin’s
pacifier

brother wants to know if we are on suicide watch together or if one of us is oblivious.  I keep with me a military secret but here’s the catch:  once I tell it, I lose the memory I have of being told.  I have a hunch he keeps the same secret.  a nagging feeling I’ll be given my own bed.

god to slow spread of reincarnation

this, from death’s
newspaper

–

found: nose of the crow-eyed infant

an animal lost in a little church

a hallucinating buzzard

snow
that light
replaced

we are
each one of us
the smallest
person
on earth

one is never too old
for god, never

too old
to surveil
the deaf

/ I know from your palm
what your hand
will drop, mother

cooks only
meat, father

is every
nightmare
she has
of her exodus

from apologue

/ having populated

the myth
of ******

the baby is empty

touch is a sign of weakness.  my father opens his mouth after speaking.  meanwhile, miracle, it occurs to me in separate car accidents that bringing me to my son in god is less an undertaking than that of arming the man who transports a stopwatch to a cemetery.  do we live the lives of those experimenting?  beauty is not alone.  suppose it knows.

naked I have cleaned the story of my own drowning

-

father leaves his raincloud

mother
her trapdoor

-

sometimes when my brother is near an apple

a body-bag
fit for a mouse
changes
color

god’s gift to god is all boy.  is doomed to repeat melancholy in real time.  is punching his *******.  is trying your hand at territorial absence.  is not feeling it on the day of the mime’s vigil.  is bombed.  is local.  is thought to have opened the book of sticks.  is not swallowing.  is eating from the angel’s dream the only fish that can stop at nothing.

the father
who observes
the brain

parenthetically

as a period
of fasting,

the sister
of extra
letters  (the mortal

of the story), and the mother

who keeps me
sober  (cook with hands

you want to eat)

dear god

dear god
I will fight you
or anyone
for the title
of this poem.

I will fight you for my son.

I will fight you
or anyone
who drops him
in the ocean

     who circles back
to save him.

focal

not even
a half hour
passes

and the man
is tying
the kicked off
shoe

     wondering
if the other
is nearby
or in

the ambulance
with his boy

immolation**

when it burns
in the oven
we call it
crow bread

     in our mouth
we call it
wasp
then slap

first our own
then the cheek
closest-

when it does not burn
at all
we check to see
if we are wearing
black socks, if we are standing

on carpet

perhaps there is or isn’t
a thing lonelier
than a naked man
looking
at his privates
while kneeling
beside
a globe
at the tail end
of a spin
but I don’t
care

absence and removal, the parents
of nowhere

pity
they don’t
smoke

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

in a barbershop
one hears

off
with his head

must be
slow town (this)

with dreamy
approximations
of coasting
wheelchairs

and uphill
bug swallowers
believing

it is hidden (it)

like a fishhook

in stomach’s
wig

give praise
god’s ashes
are still
collected

the second machine
though equally
godless

deepens

our understanding
of the first. mother

under

the dinner table
that doubled
as the operating.

a cigarette ****
misses its mark, the largest
head
the child’s
ever
had…

the shut-ins
meet their food
halfway

the angels
burn only
the books
they’ve time
to read

it snows, churchbell

snows
on the crippled glow
of an Ohio
cemetery
where later
I’ll brush
a white hand
from the arm
of a stone
cross

mothers compare notes on hostage etiquette. fathers break bread over the disputed anniversary of god’s body language. brothers in bear costumes collapse. sisters convince matching tattoos to befriend the same fingerprint. you hold your baby. want me to drop mine.

it comes up in conversation how his dogs, ******* and ******, were killed during a bout of baby-proofing. biters both; like mirror their mother. she is only god in that we sent her a son. he says this, and also this: the act of swimming is a creature that comes to my knees. we bring him the raccoon. no raccoon, no moon.

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.

~ son in bathwater ~

nose to nose, my hands under his armpits and his hands soft and missing. his legs holding onto his feet and the river or the rug pulling away. I haven’t looked at anyone like this. if somewhere a knife slips in and out of consciousness, I don’t care. it will not be news.

~ a diaspora ~

don’t worry, because here is worry:

a stone in a grounded bird’s nest.

it is easy to say, I guess. to come up with
the fed multitudes.

hell is to be in two places at once that are both hell.
see above.

see below:

shade of stone, kind of bird. knowing, here is knowing:

the poor write good.

~ harlequin ~

as a father I audition alone for the part the mother does not get.
to my audition, I carry two eggs. I break them on my chest.

cancer, family, but mostly cancer.
in the cardboard forest, my daughter picks up a wand.

~ a fear of ~

baby on baby
violence
continues to be
the number one
reason

daycares
across the country
do not report
the imaginary
friends

of illegals

~ my father’s singing voice ~

an abandoned dog
on a weekday
shops its grief
from homeless man
to homeless
woman

under threat
of lightning

where else

~ escapism ~

my wife was pregnant with a silhouette. it lost itself to her. it left me out. I began saying sensitive things around women about their bodies so one might trace me. I said lord I thought my life would be sadder. I bought an AK47 because it was the only gun I recognized. I hung it on my neck. my wife used her memory to pluck things from my hands. food, mostly. it helped me realize I was rarely using both hands for the same purpose. my wife began going out at night. said she did so to hate America. when once I tried to join her on the front step I was informed how she missed me but not as much as I believed. she threw bread crumbs into a shuddering bush and I had the feeling it wasn’t new for her. yesterday, I sold the gun to an interested neighbor with a child to protect. he told me my wife’s nightgown is rather sheer but that he’s more concerned with how she carries herself. after hearing that, I don’t think anyone could’ve dragged me to him.

~ angel scene ~

when on the path
some small
unnamed
creature
senses
the oblivious
coming
of a man

and wishes
in its own
animal way
to be called
into ash
or bush

~ immolation ~

when it burns
in the oven
we call it
crow bread

in our mouth
we call it
wasp
then slap

first our own
then the cheek
closest-

when it does not burn
at all
we check to see
if we are wearing
black socks, if we are standing

on carpet

~ kenning ~

he wasn’t put here
to beat you
in front
of any
fool
reminds him
of that woman
who wished herself
into a fly.

he has been more than open with you
about it
about
his reincarnation

how he happened
to be the first
to know it.

you keep it all in, bring your mother
noises

from field
so she can determine
which ear
works…

word association
is a thing
of the future.

be the property of your blood.

to find
in the moments
after
the vision
that yes
you’ve eaten
everything
in sight, that a baby

yours
or not

is asleep
in a somersault, that you worshiped

prayer and fell

for hunger’s
childhood

blindfolds
and salt
remain
irresistible.                  

the male, the white, the young.

I am sorry
three times.

I square my hands
as you     swim.

     I pixelate    

bibles.

art avoids me.

having heard, for example, be quiet your mother’s coma is trying to sleep.  having folded like undiscovered pregnancies into verbatim.  having had *** that is not the writhing one does, one by one, in dream.  this crowing about voice.  echo’s elusive scar.  voice a sort of god taming.  extreme sport of the conceptually stunned.  comma.  god the sentence fails to recover.

the dark, the ocean.

I have two reasons to believe god
has not stopped creating.

-

our father
had this phrase

all in good time
psychic

and this other

you’ve got
the dropsies

-

I bring these borrowed hands
to shelve
your books.

you seem touched.

-

my anger has gone the way of the milkman.

his doomed child
with her piece of chalk.

making book covers
in the ****

my brother
my higher
brother

is on
about
some late
film

performance
by a woman
he says

has inspired him
to take a ****
on a baby
in a pick-up
truck
and to drive

the truck and to call his route

the border
of the last
miracle

or we can call it
something else

I don’t think
he knows
really
I am just

something saddened
by sorrow, a frog

aware
of caves, as if god’s

creatures
were a result
of god
imagining
what she’d not
seen

scatter...

longhand
the syringe
of poor
colossi,

wrists
both suicide
attempt
and apologue:

I love
brother

for how

he’d split
himself
into outside

time
and inside
time

that he might
tell
a door
****-off
or a dreaming

hieroglyph
his tale

the band-aid
and the risen
ant

choice:  genetic.

soul:  hmmmmm.

boy:  a girl in that pre-vowel morn.

in my plainness a seesaw

in her dream jaw her dreamboat’s jawbone

in our daily belly

in the church of rolling our own
a film
ghosting
a film

in a rug made of bread a tooth made of bread

in mannequins where small things kneel that are living

in claw-marks and in jigsaws of the crucifixion

in

crows balloons of the strangled

during the assault, I was seen praying an oceanographer into heaven by all but god.  a body entered a nursing home to find a suitable head.  I stayed put to care for the little blood they say never hurt anyone.  I have since held that some have both haloes of bird and star.  that any man with two has a single unnecessary blindfold.  long

that there is no wrong way to collect errata.

animal then man then woman. god was the god of grief. one saltwater thing to another

why
a garden?

–

shadow

you unusable
rag

in your
sleep that
makes you
blush.

someone is kissing the top of my head.  the garbage disposal is a thunderstorm that’s taken my tooth.  the woman who introduced a kitten to a cat named birdbath is painting my fingernails white while the man she’s admonished for pacing is warning me about using a hand for a pillow.  came all this way

did the raindrop
to highlight
a stone.

death is make-up for the interview.  when I get to my mother I plan to visit the city.  I hear a gang of young girls operates there trafficking middle aged men who act old.  I hear what I want when I delete emails.  I lost not touching my mother soon after she stopped being an actress.  she fled my father who at the time was known as her live-in stunt double.  I put my fist in the air and waited.  some told me I was being cinematic.  still some told me I was being cinematic.

there’s no body for the soul to go into.  as a murderer can better tell you where the survivors are, a baby can worship its mouth.  I hear coughing when I’m about to be gentle.

~

dream enters the girl I’ve decided to have.  you know her mother as the doctor of my impostor.  as the one who said the battery is real.

~

I abandon my cane like a robot that wants to climb a tree.  there’s a mattress that’s not the river she pulled it from.

daughter, you reached
your age
and your brother
reached his-

instead of kissing
a nearby head
I became
a kind of writing, a television

inside of which
a cigarette
signaled

to someone
I couldn’t place

that he or she
return
the bar

of soap, the short

life-

I bathed whatever creature
you could get
your hands on

whether it be
your brother

or not, before

or after
abuse-

I beheaded the parents
of thoughtless

children
in this
I was early

what would she ask
sadness

that old blindfold
from the future

how did you
get old, how

did my father
eat
and eat
at the same

time

perhaps
you’ve seen it
the mask
that took

my face

I go into the garage
just before bed
and overturn
what is my version
of a rowboat.

by morning
the man on top of me
is made of dirt.

her mask is not god
but godlike
in that it has
no ears.

there throbbed in a bird’s nest a comma.

fly!  the map of hell is burning.

I must finish the sentence my jailer cannot.

god is blind.  but why mourn?  abandon the moon
like a paper
mask.

a mosquito circles the string of a kite.  half risen
there is blood
in a straw.

my son has drawn jesus being killed by arrows.  

I have used my whole body under a blanket.  

our fathers were making bacon, which of them
caught fire, we take turns.  mine runs
out the door
into a silent film
about a pool.  yours
has a wife
eating ice cream.

any judgment in the court of murmurs
repeats.

we will be sad and there will be **** / we will be sad.

if we do not travel, it will be
by crocodile.

in the clothes that briefly kept eve.

wind’s childhood, nothing’s

gift exchange

first fog
and the speechless
are giving
birth

longing is a stickman’s tail

a boy I know
checks
for his nose

whose father hits a deer

whose mother won’t mention
the puppet’s
bra

imagine
your decoy’s
memory

it was with me
absence

when I took
a shape / the alien

had wheeled its thing

in dog years
to nothing

I am at a word
for loss.

a woman
in muddy underclothes
looking at all things
starless

feels frog bone
nudge
the base of her skull
as her friends
wade, dive
and wrongly
mourn-

it’s only her costume
in the water.

it will become the small talk
of Halloween
2013

and vanquish
the split apart
three year old
apportioned
to any phrasing

of the inmate
on the Ohio row
who on the day
of execution
dressed himself
as a God
easier found
than vein

instead, the two large dogs go game over a single stick. a bucket moves now and then, mouth side down, and because I am high I put my heart to the right side of my chest. I have been told under the bucket there is a dead chipmunk. I periodically believe this, and cannot admit I am stirred by doubt. I focus on the dogs and on the stick I can see. you’ve braved the zip line that runs through the trees and I might have heard your legs crack on the road. I’ve known Ohio to be flat, but here I am. I’ve known Ohio to sound like the young adult Jesus strolling and that’s if I strain. I am afraid to go in the house; I worry the dogs will either disappear downhill to lick you or tip the bucket and be lost.