(for my daughter, Mary Ann, soon fourteen)

I was eleven years old when I first had something taken from me.  My parents were still married and my two younger brothers had not yet chosen to choose differently which one they’d live with.  My dog had not yet been made lame by a falling fat man who’d taken the gift of my father’s strange rage square on the nose.  And my older sister had yet to misjudge her jump from a moving train.  No, none of these things, whether they happened or not how I’ve remembered, had happened.

I was eleven years old and in love with an old red bike.  It had a license plate that obnoxiously read Go Now Mega which I’d scratched at with a fork and so became Gnome.  I would fail my whole life to accomplish a thing greater. Before school, I’d walk the bike carefully to the end of our short drive and then seat myself on it and be still.  I would often be so perfect in my stillness that I’d forego riding it and just listen for the bus and at the last possible moment walk the bike, still carefully, back into the garage and cringe at the sound the kickstand made when lowered.  If ever school didn’t go my way I’d think of the bike, alone, in the garage and be calmed.  When I did ride the bike, I did so slowly and deliberately that I could feel my soul get a bit ahead of me.  On the best mornings, I would have for company a bed sheet of fog which made me want to fake being asleep on the couch while my mother and father milled back and forth about who would carry me to bed.

The bike had come with the rental house we moved into just shy of my tenth birthday.  The house was a three bedroom one floor with one bathroom and what felt like two kitchens.  I was too close to my hands and feet to now recall any vision that might tell me how these rooms were mapped though I’ve always held aloft the word blueprint.  I should tell you that what I previously called a garage was actually our backyard and that our backyard was really the backyard of those living in the house behind ours.  I didn’t want you to know right away who took the bike.  Who’ve no imagination.

sitting on a decorative toilet in her child’s front yard, the mother scrubs her left wrist with a dry toothbrush.  her right wrist squeals to be cut.  there’s a wet spot on the grocery bag she wears on her head and the spot spreads.  her flower print dress is optimistic.  with a crow ever so lightly on his mind, my father writes the address of the electric company on a notecard and slips it into a pocket bible.  he tells me to forget what I’ve seen and I wonder if I get to pick.  my heart feels more like a broken light bulb the more I breathe and goes to my head the less.  beneath the malformed crow my father culls, he gives me the *** talk.  he includes that most crows are manna from hell or holes in the kingdom.

fat
with crocodile tears
for the alien
dead
your stomach
rings
a private
bell

I have a camera
sets a trap
for silence

an animal
you can borrow

a full-grown scarecrow

death’s first parrot

I have children, a suicidal thought
that can love
up to three

a pilot’s
paper seashell

like some verbally abused parrot

the crow
the phone’s
god

at thirty seven, I’m not far behind my wrists.  I am aware I put a certain strain on my sons.  I say to stones I’ve skipped my share of stones.  where fascinated, I am frightened.  the story of the foot that fell asleep then broke.  of the vanished schoolgirl on the wrong bus, beaten and pulled under seat after seat, taking with her

     that perfect weight.

I’m here, now, if you want to put a bug in your dad’s ear about pouring coffee.  in the war the thing I felt crawling up his spine became his spine.  in the war I called it abandoned and he said not while we’re in it.  he scratched the worst looking dog into the side of it so we’d know it was a church.  I shared more than once how I’d be stupid as that dog to guard a dogfight and less than once how jesus would’ve been a suicide bomber had the crowd been clueless.  we cried about women and children and by our crying they were found.

he emerges from the driver’s side of his stalled minivan as if you’ve been given too much information.  he holds a hammer in the looseness of his stung left hand.  for a moment it seems he’ll attack windows.  instead, he cries.  his shoulders give him away.  not a car horn sounds.  this is a kindness.  someone has an egg timer.  I locate the itch thrown off course by my lover’s legs and imagine her happy.  across town a silent alarm is pressed by the anonymous smoker of wedding cigarettes.  the bomb squad arrives before the bomb squad knows it and you join

this bomb squad.

yours
that the bird
not have to carry
its cage.

mine
that the bird
not have to carry
its cage
in its beak.

ours
that we are not tired
sitting together
this early

easing
fish bones
into bubbles.

you strike me as an invasive listener.  I love your body.  loving mine doesn’t mean I’m not okay wearing too many clothes.  does this make me look alone?  like, crucifix-on-the-dashboard alone?  my mother fell for my father because he couldn’t find a finger to write with.  horror movies lift me from poverty into a long period of healing followed by a jump scare.  earlier, before you bled into a corncob, my brain had you as a spider spinning an infant.  if it pleases god, I’d like to go somewhere time hasn’t been.

for David Smith*

as I wait for what this painting reminds me of, a stickman with a short straw works my mother’s head injury into his teleplay of snowfall and crow.  asleep, you must be in the ambulance outside my father’s church.

when he stopped eating
the food
provided
the food
became angry
and impossible
to eat.

the food
provided elsewhere
became so calm
some used it
as a sleep
aid
secondary
to starvation.

I try not to think for my children, it’s hard, they are
delicious
children.

i.

though still in the process
himself
of being
created

god is an expert on earth.

he is just now beginning to regain his composure
after a short stint / speaking in tongues.

ii.

laymen exist
to question
what my mother’s body
cannot identify-

a specific amnesia
that attacks
her many
pseudonyms

iii.

stories keep my children perfect.

in the story of the rabbit’s mask
one finger out of every ten
is as empty
as the rabbit’s brain

iv.

to bring my first stranger
to god

I plan to use the alias
my father goes by
to pray.

take
to the sinking
city
of god’s
jack-in-the-box
a stick

from the wand’s
dream

the bean counter
of cigarette butts
our father
sits on the roof
reading aloud
from silence.

it is mother
has a mind
for arranging
furniture.

it is dog hears digging.

I heard myself reprimanded for childless behavior.  I saw myself as two of the same people.  my older brother gave me pennies he thought were sleeping pills.  we later agreed I thought the same.  the funny talk went from my mouth into god only knows.  strangers begged me to repeat myself but not a one could tell me what I’d said.  those far to me sent word, or meant to.  my sister showed up out of the blue but stayed just long enough to send her privates into hiding.  my mother and father promised to punish me for no reason.  I began to love them for giving me a son.  I began by telling them I was in some trouble.

no name
for what
I name
I’m
the news
I get

–

she couldn’t
bring herself
in life
to talk
to the kids
she had

–

wounded in the whiteness of god,

his brother was a helicopter
they called
tornado

–

a sack
of kittens
the swimmer’s
gold

I appear to your helplessness

warming his hands above a baby’s crib.

massaging the lame leg of a dog at rest.

accidentally crushing the pack of cigarettes in his right shoe.

being ours.  being her memory’s
unsent
reply.

when saying her name, mother would insist the curse words were silent.  for swallowing secrets, father had his throat professionally cut.  I remember wiping my nose with a shirt darker than blood.  instead of good washrags, we had words brought about by having company.  mother ran wild through my sentences while father bent to kiss a pillow for sleeping with my stomach.  apocalypse came and came.  the act was the act’s debut.

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.

burn the scarecrow
your mother
translates for.

make your daughter
believe
that a ******
is a nobody, that a somebody

does her own
stunts.

hire
grief’s interpreter
on a part-time
basis
to blow
your son
in your son’s
presence.

as a symbol of your absence

disappear.

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

a man
home
after exposing
himself
to children
of late
life
blindness, the man

we bike to
while able-

the suicide
of a different
man, a changed

man-

the two men
briefly
neighbors

both refusing

for the non
emerging
newborn

my mother’s
failed
cake.

not as common
is the dream
stuck
in the man.

not all wounds
report back.

I’d look for my father
if I knew where
to begin.

with my mother
it’s like my mother never happened.

I am the man whose missing woman
was bedridden
first.

I depend on my safety.
I worship a sleep that worships.

my brother feels no pain.  a characteristic
he blames
on my sister’s
begging
to be interrogated.

not on speaking terms with a former self,
the dream is god.

I have been avoiding your paintings.  your paintings blindfold me.  I see what I don’t.  a puppy addicted to its tongue.  a heaven not of this world.  stillness turns my stomach.  outside the womb.

the kids
they are calling
the girl
my mother
an oyster

-

all elbows
they are calling
them
my privates

what I think
are teeth

-

what I know of bees
can fit
in the bee
my brothers
lose

-

lost

[hunger anomalies]

your son
he has
two brains
that’s great
but we’re looking
for water’s
stomach

~

[starvation names its food]

ask the sickest boy what a pig says to the pink phone of god

leave fingerprints for his hand to find

have words
with echo-

he will die
he will not die
laughing

~

[death has too many mothers]

in me like a sympathy pain

is Christ, her language

a fasting
echo

my first worm
I thought
it was being
dragged

I was just a boy

it was just
worm
like

/ stillness
has it always
been
genetic

/ the context of god, the deadpan

birth
of son...

/ nowhere’s

by design
butterfly

your cigarette
slant

for the stone
in your mouth.  mother

she ******
the blood

of towels.  made I

from a lesser
stone

two birds.  things, like singing,

that didn't
happen.

birth mothers
move
the word
of god.  

from this point on, I am not dead.

is this
how I sound
saying
to water
that beneath
a rabid
bat
two sisters
share
a leech?

cairn
is to
the father’s
stomach
what melancholy
is
to sorrow.  would that one’s

non-existence
could be
again.

my children were running and were plucked.  eyewitnesses were arguing over a comma their accounts did not include.  my brother was nearby and heard a voice he thought mine.  he used it to say that’s not a landmine that’s the body of my dad.  my children were running from me when they were plucked.  I was on fire which is coffee talk for surreal.  in actuality I was on fire just a little.  but my kids are **** smart, or were, in the sense they were needed elsewhere.

by morning, the bite marks on my son's arms have moved to his legs.

as for magic, there is none.

one must go everywhere in person.

when out and about, we bury baby brother’s head in big sister’s chest to keep his acne from strangers.  when inside, we rotate setting leftovers in front of our only mirror.  my growth spurt happens overnight.  I start telling stories of a woman dentist and the family she doesn’t see.  baby brother starts to bite.  his parents buy a hairbrush and work together to thieve a single paper plate.  someone gets too close to the face of god.

she had early on been beaten into one piece.

it was true
the broom
had gotten
taller.

mom said nothing.  mom swept.

in a ******* on fire
the arsonist
fills
the mouth
he is trying
to leave

(it is not hunger that eats the horse)

I am past the age of what
in a former life
I died as, a spoon

is a fork

asleep in the hand of god

birth
knows everyone

father makes a wound in hard ground.  may your body be with you.  father treats my most pale hand as if it’s a painter’s brush.  in what was dubbed the guest house craze we lost artist before artist.  father shuns the collective statement.  without my boy I come upon a red horse mirrored in calm by a white bull.  valley nonsense.  the boy didn’t suffer.

externally,  I believe in masks.  pull at my ******* when I have them.  pull old man.  you are my soul.  happiness is the impossibility of incidental sadness.  tell happiness to child one through child four.  too many tear too tamely at the face no goddess dies in.  a time honored receiver is disappointingly brilliantly a sponge

living off
your mother’s hand.

exit music for stop-motion departures.

a son
a dying breed
of circle.

can light
perfect
a shadow?

The church is an iceberg.  

     from Winter Night, Charles Simic


No one remembers what it was
They were knitting
And what happened when the ball of yarn
Rolled out of their laps
And had to be retrieved.*  

     from Gallows Etiquette, Charles Simic



I was on lookout in a tower
     eye level with god.
I had a pretty little head
     on my shoulders.

the idea came to me
in fingers

that touched
my heels.

on behalf
of the soul
which entered

you, father
then you, mother

I report
my disappearance
and applaud
the cameo

memory
of the countless, sounding

born

the elderly
our unpraised
orphans
with healed
and self-taught
toys

~~~~

cancer is a pop gun and when I say missing I mean her body was seen by the lonely / her body / was having children but only those / we’d seen / in photos / I mean bus

of a christian
swim team

~~~~

when cooking, mama says she is burning the uniform of the country I was dragged through.  she knows better than to come from rib.  cheek, maybe.  or fishhook.  

~~~~

scar to my wound, this man believes in god. the last thing I learn is what I know. Franz Wright’s final book is called The Toy Throne. I understand this man when he says he was born with a disabled child. what is lightning

to a fish

~~~~

faith a shoelace in an unbroken egg

I stare at the letter x

~~~~

the plate

in god’s head
is a writer’s
dream.  she crows

her three
words
for stoplight
as a doll

bites down
on a stick…

math is maybe not the best look for grief

and hunger

too academic

~~~~

after suicide, everything that happens is the past

~~~~

I am not a ghost,

hand
I use
the least

~~~~

the mothers they were rehearsing in the drive-thru
the *** talk for boys they thought
were still
alive

-

crush a white tick / you’ll become / a projectionist

-

sleep is a bleeding stopped by the eye

~~~~

with god
prepared
to remove
its white
stomach, the dream

sees brain
as the print
of its thumbless
hand

~~~~

/ to a breathing machine in a swimming pool

the angel says whale

/ my nightmare

has a whale. it takes grief

from a mule

/ my brothers are ****

and star. claustrophobes

haunting
the hard
to forgive

~~~

alone in that no-name church of dream

scales of grief
and thrown back
fish

the saint of the poolside ***** twister brings a syringe to a puppet show where his father is busy not meaning all women.  brother is showing me around the space he promises will be a kick in the *****.  I am waiting to donate blood to little baby bear hug when I hear we share a mother.

no longer
a god
the male
finds mother
hard
to worship

-

I am
what I imagine

eaten

-

who the eyes

undress
in Eden

the healed are chewing their hands beneath posters of fast food taken from the walls of god’s cell. poetry is dead. prose the bone placed in the bowl of a frostbitten dog. nothing burns. not like a baby’s ears at an oyster farm.

loneliness changes hands.  when wife mentions the baby, I borrow a phrase from father and it works.  care packages are my sister’s forte.  by the way she dresses, you’d think she works for heaven.  you would not entertain for a moment that her child was sent by god to interview itself.  on the plus side of my brother, my brother has a fog machine.