i.

thoughts of brother-

     a panther
half biting your arm
while you sleep.

ii.

     deliberate man, your father.
his early morning, his garden of bookmarks.
smoke from the ash tray, from the picture
     of him on the tractor.

iii.

on the news, they are talking to your mother.
she tells them her son
your brother

walked into a crowd
once before
but did not
explode.

iv.

she looks good on camera.

     greyer.

before violence can celebrate the sleep that got away,

my father howled my sister down until she became a voice in my head.  I go to where she might’ve been so I can be looked at as one asking before her.  men have for me two syllables that form a coma.  women stand in final stages of nakedness holding jugs of water but leave me to flower and to mull on them as incantations of the tin man’s great calling.  if I am romantic I am romantic in the increments my mother measures to dream herself to sleep.  beauty is the prop scale I rule from.  none are the mourners of gain.

the lamp
eating
its bowl
of light

the lamp
eating
its bowl
of light

the bicycles were given a much needed space and a few people went to their stomachs in a representation loosely based on the most elegant sentence ever written about a groupie     and even a baby helicopter with a hidden remote flew over the open gifting and caused a bit of a scare with a firecracker     our fear of it cowered the elements     but to disarm there came a cake in the shape of a church bell     the rain would ruin     but at the time to see people outside     being little ramps     of privacy

when her mouth arrives, it arrives in pain.  what gets around to my brother is that after her fire was dipped in hell she tried to drown her trigger finger.  I make a mental list of the oddest things that stick to my body.  my hands come from two camps of how to count the devil’s teeth.  food is the voice of god but it goes right through me.

the teenage boys
trade punches
after dark
which
if I thump
my chest
my daughter
questions
why not
say
during dark
and so
I thump my chest
and ask her
why she wears
only one skate
that is not
the skate
sails between
two pairs
of tired legs
and rolls
over
spots
of boy blood
each spot
drying
at a different
rate
the skate
carrying nothing
but stillness
if not
into the night
then
on that which
underfoot
disappears

ago, we buried something here that has kept us calm.  my father lived in a beat-up car and over time he became its radio.  some kids from town came once to push the car and my father got out to help.  one of the kids was my mother when my mother could still see what others could not.  her favorite sound remains that of a severed head banging around in a time machine.  so many kids went missing here that couples make more on the spot.  the animals try but have so far kept god going.

two ears
at once
her wounded
boy

–

sleep has one god

absence, none

–

the cough
he had
the week
he was missing

like the contents
of a purse

my sorrows
shift

a few
are darkly
touched

some are
chosen

one I think
for a baby’s
lampless

mouth

I say
into beer cans
code names
for ear

oh earth
to dog
miss

whole phantoms

the breast
the mother
is able
to keep.

the healthcare.

the train
lazily
unassigned

to freight or passenger.

the repressed memory
I think I have
of my oversexed
split

personality.  that I verbally assault

with my better
puppet

hand.

it is always a neighbor of ours tries to schedule amnesia and gets put down for suicide. it is always me on a farm machine hasn’t moved in years writing a poem for mom. it is never a mediocre ventriloquist marries a better.

walking
a blank
stretch

to rival / the disappearing /

wilderness
of starvation

/ the bride
of reflection
with her dog
made of sticks

backstage, the ventriloquist wept.
he shook one of his two dolls at a ceiling fan.
his wife in the show was not his real wife
but she put her forehead on the back of his neck
just the same. his cell phone rang
and the show wife made a little joke
of having the second doll answer.
I thought of my mother and my father
safely
in third person

they were taking turns moving shampoo
through my hair
as I hummed.

the poor
in Ohio
say
Ohio

as if god had poured oil
on an egg
about to hatch
I was up all night
sleeping
like my mother
before me
whose future
went on
forever
and I saw
again
the temple
of that hellish
artifact
from the first
suicide
yours
inspired

my babysitter’s best friend pins me to the floor with her knees and makes me say the word *** to my *** brother who’s still facing the corner he was put in for kissing a mirror.  in heaven, you don’t have a mouth.  the man who said he’d hurt before letting pain get stuck with a woman

is dying.

until he can recall being born
he will be an introvert
made
to endure
the props
of forgiveness
in the nowhere
theater
of his health
where a noose
hangs

from a showerhead
and live shows
are for the past

the boy takes a long look inside himself.  his girlfriend settles on a word she can spell.  they sit here on the kitchen floor because it is clean.  the dishwasher is old and runs loudly.  miles off an ambulance driver attempts to enter a silent film while holding a garage door opener.  now back to the boy.  as my dad would say.

I am old enough to drive.  I can’t tell you how big my hands are.  I glide or think I glide like a priest and allow a white butterfly to brush the black robe of my passage as I would a woman’s glove.  I place a pair of roller skates in high grass and put my knees on them.  I watch my uncle, because he is mad at my father or because he loves my mother, throw chickens by the neck into the pond.  his teeth clamp a cigarette as if it might leap.  keeping it exhausts him.

blow-up dolls, those

using drugs
to dream.

anyone
on stilts
but leave
the stilts
for god.  on that

note, any child

earmarked
for stilt
removal.  

a twin.

the pregnant
and the men
in the dark.

I never have enough teeth in my mouth to love my brothers equally. They each have a tick full of blood to throw at a beehive. We form a band to hide our erections but only write one song. Because I’m the oldest, I’ll be dead the longest. Boys don’t call things what they are. Baseball and deer got Ohio lucky. We aim our **** and cry with our stomachs. Think Jesus did all that just to poison god. There are easier ways to get a sister. When shot, we take it in the leg. I don’t go outside anymore but here and there the unshaped crawl into my ear. The re-shaped, not so much. Boys and girls aren’t real. We compare school shooters. Blueballs, leg pain, the holier symptoms of swimmer’s echo.

as for hangman
and as
for the donkey’s

tail

mother

wets the bed
before leaving
to weigh herself.  

-

the cave is all mouth.

-

when they ask what our sick
son
has
say

echo.

the one time it crossed his mind to hit my mother, the garage door opened.  the day I was born, a man called my mother at work and left a message that was mostly breathing.  the story of the message was repeated to those born after me when each became old enough to need a laugh.  when it was known no more would be coming down the pike, mother began hitting herself.  it was in this era of standing room only that I was able to convince god we’d slipped into the water satan said was there.

notes from my brother include moments of outage.  typo, testament.  I’ve never experienced anything so awful as talking.  during *** I pretend I am a surge protector.  my death is over.  I slip into god and it’s painful bad.  sorry, I took the ******* my phone had in it and made him write this.  back to god I feel I’m praying him through the first break-up he remembers.  headlines rip me the **** outta mom.

A machine in the ghosted and are these yes the agreed upon animals. Error prone infant, my mistake is gone forever. My favorite action movie is classism and ours is a silent one about god forgetting to save her progress. I thought it would be the eating that would be hard to devour. Obsession is a border. Sometimes when I babysit apocalypse you die behind death's back.

it is easier now that I know I was never going to be a better person.  if I once called poetry the grieving arm that ends in five short complaints, I am sorry.  I watch my son lick the space on the table where he’ll put his cheek.  it is not for me to believe he is a sign of warnings to come.  the distant memory of his tongue is not mine to betray.  I want to kiss you to the sound of god counting footfalls on a mountain path.  for one, I have never been completely covered in bruises.  also, I was in the spotlight when my mother was asked to describe a sponge.  instead, she identified the break in the letter where a father changed pens and childhood as the longing of Eve.

sacrifice
has its own
unbeatable
consciousness

I give the rat my dollhouse at night.  our basement has a disease.  my brother brings a flashlight to dinner.  mother says poor devil to the poor devil she can’t stop eating.  I have my own language that in hindsight is an age gap.  I am so heavy.  I jump and water gets out of my way.  between you and me, sister sees me coming and throws herself on the trapdoor we’ve made a game of rolling eggs over.  father shares a hat with god like there’ll be something in it.

at this point
means:

river deer
     like you’ve never seen.
a soup bowl; empty, aglow.
another’s head
     in my hands.
coordination.
energy.
receiving the word
a day late
  that energy
   has arrived.
marriage, or a single
parent
  torn.
perfectly mediocre terror.
a love of statues.
love of placards.
showing my son
the man I’ve chosen
  to remember him by.
art not reflective of, or art
     sideshow.
knowing the kids of others.
knowing just how many gifts
     god had.
that the word overcome
has always been
  past tense.
weight gain. weight loss.
detecting
no difference
  in weight.
telescope, or the long
thin hat
  of god.

means:

I don’t have hands and my eyes are trying to kiss.

yester.

a drone’s
love
for a landmine.

and notice, in my knee,
pins, toothpicks. randomly.
the kitchen, softer, than recall.
than rain, than book, or empty hall.
than bird, than bee, than tooth
in straw. what bird what bee
I wouldn't know. save sounding
what a day might own. I wouldn't know
my wife has left
but for this brush, its night haired theft:

my wife has left. she wasn't tall. my sons
have gone
to hobble dolls.

a runway model
in a cornfield

/ the stone a short film on snowfall

conduit of bliss

with a phobia
of narcolepsy

-

walking

as if hacked
by a definitely
clever

****     newly enrolled

in a course
on private
speaking

-

my brother

-

who staged
his after life

I step inside myself
to address
the thinning
army.

age is the only distance my body can record.

my thoughts go unsettled.
they are held
either
in an ant, or in the sewing needle
the ant
climbs.

I scratch nothing’s mark.
I kiss what’s left
of my father.

god’s nose breaks on the ankle of a peasant.
remains mother
a meditation
on the heaviness
of stars.

my brother calls a stoplight the math brain of god.  my best friend bites the apple that once controlled the minds of sheep.  scenes from your childhood bring back mine.  her memory is all she can think about.

of the three tenses
only the future
can regenerate.

but for the tongue
the mouth would be
forgotten.

I guess we’d still have to look at it.
the ugly open thing.

I strained my eyes reading in the dark.
pretending to read the bible.

I don’t love words.

currently I’ve convinced myself
that in my tall cup of coffee
a spider
can sense itself
separating.

give me an easy one.

earth on hell
your local
gas station.

I pushed a baby
in a grocery cart
from one spot
to another
and back.

I only just remembered
no one noticed.

i.

an aerial view

of parked
white

vans

parked
impossibly

close

ii.

a hinterland
boy

packs snow
into his mother’s mouth
to keep it
open

iii.

only a snake
uses
the jawbone
of a snake

No one
on the moon
gets dragged
by a train.

A star
milks
a split
baby. It’s noon

and you are choosing
******
for god.

The land is ours where we cry on stilts.

gender,

a ****** woman
for every
crucified
man / nostalgia,

a baby
undetected
by the mother
we see

it gets around
at auction
that the crucified
they are planning
to bid
on a pair
of ballet shoes
worn
thrice
by the mistress
of radiation’s
exposed
angel

/  still, it’s nothing to shake a stick at

the addict’s
board game

the farness of heaven is the farness of twin.  a packed theater starts a fire in a factory.  a mother and a father clay themselves as figures put to sleep in a clawfoot tub.  across the board, a boy is crushed after witnessing for the image of the crowd-surfing girl he was made in.  you can’t eat touch.

we share
an evacuation
process.

there is nothing in this
or that
world.

I am what’s left to say
to the saying.

it’s as close
to fight
heaven.

An ambulance filling with doll bones hits a dog made of the wrong echo. A swimmer’s skull leaves itself to the math of passing through god. A tattoo artist, who once longed to show roadkill to a star, peels in the moonlight the white apples of tortured stickmen. Bringing them back won’t bring them back. The angels knew for three days where Jesus would be. Faked amnesia thinking they’d stop.