as a filmmaker
I’d bury
the permanence
of my son
the magnifying
glass
in full
dress
of the shadow
lurking behind
the crudest
of surveillance
systems

morning my grandfather wheels with one hand his chair and with the other dips a net into the many tops of a pool.  he taps the rim of the net on the walk to better appraise the wet calf legwork of a grasshopper.  he lets the net touch bottom then releases it wholly to its listening.  he will avoid feeling like the net and instead allow his hands their errancy to the tugged down caps of invisible boys.  a healthier man, a more nervous man, would smoke.

he rolls his sleeves and can better see dropped pipes, freed hammocks.  an ant in the low, upturned hill of his elbow makes for his palm and is quickly there and lost.  not today, but others, he has heard children skin their knees at which point houses appear for them to enter.  

from the chair he lifts his forgotten buttocks and they hold for only a moment their dream of sitting.  he circles then the  cement sides of the pool and then it’s dark.  so dark that when he is visited by two bright shoes he believes they are alone and so ties them underwater.

from father, footrace, fistfight (poems, June 2014)

(available on Lulu)

duologue

we’ll start here, turtle.

this is what I say to the grey thing I’ve been talking to.

the only buffer between engagement & constant engagement
is life
during wartime.

I conceive of a dropper
but hold it empty
above my eye.

because it is the one word without a beginning

suffering
because it is the one word without a beginning
is not limited
by its
vocabulary.

we wanted a sophisticated god
but in immediate
unison
called it
god.

this is the grey cream
that gives her privacy.

I am drawn to a sort of journalism
by association, a campestral formlessness
attached
for example
to the term

carpet bombing.

how is death, here? in an orange ball of yarn

she is not ahead of?

she has to stop, turtle.

to declaw an electrocuted kitten
she didn’t
electrocute.



isochronal character

the theme of this person-to-be is footprint.  for years I hated my figure and for years I went undetected.  I had female heroes both sad and sad reboots.  for a fee one told me I was fleeting.  the fee included the thumbtack moon my heel had liberated from a schoolchild’s diorama.  we come as babies so none can ask us what we remember.  the theme of this person-as-is

is mouthpiece.  her red phone has been tapped by those my blood is filming.


impossible beast

the whole town was in the parade. the newer babies had a float to themselves. at some point I was shot by a gunman so disoriented he mistook himself for my father. I swooned as if trying to avoid landing on a board member second-guessing her proposed location for purgatory. somewhere in the darkness the firehouse caught fire. I followed my blood but to me it seemed a celebrity’s sadness. my mother found me in her bed with a part of her heart. she was bright with the rumor that my sister’s snake-bitten neck had some takers.

***, make your face.

my father returned a clock
hair
fell from
a birthmark…

deaf as a housefire
my brother was *****
in two
tents, he pulled our mom

from a clown car
a tornado
died
in hell

lacuna

Ohio 1976 I was given a word.  a helluva word.  I went unborn.  a word my mother swallowed.  a troublesome word.  nervosa sans pretext.  my father slept until his sleep became self aware.  he paced.  then gave me his word.  stood over me.  

Ohio 2013 you ***** on my shadow in an abandoned building outside of which a pregnant woman bikes herself into a garage door and bloodies her nose between sound and horn.

we’re not allowed to be in the house past a certain time. we read in tongues from the book of that’s how babies disappear. we hide the insomniac’s handsoap. our fathers do impressions. our mothers the bulk of the digging. we waste little. blood, paint. from our dream supply.

lipstick on a juicebox

was hell
so poor

a raft     I did not build

-

a late entry
thunderstorm

-

a baby    
     waving around

another
baby’s
sock

-

the poverty I own

     the poverty
you

-

a man
on all fours

     a tinier
woman
rider

-

a kite’s shadow

on leave

-

expat nations

in an art
spooked
by loneliness

you did this
to yourself

infants
by nature
are cryptic.

beset by symbols of worry, parents

become clear.

draw for me
a bomb shelter.

     name those already there.

rag doll
our talisman
of verbal
abuse

and crystal

ball
the whale’s
brain

/ ******

saw pigs in chewing gum

word gets around
the schoolyard
pretty quick
that my father
drove his body
off a cliff
so god
would have a nail
hot enough
to touch.  

I have a tooth
can make it
snow.

because there is more than one city, my brother falls asleep in the back of a taxi he’s pretending is an ambulance.  my sister remains close to father but not closer than he is to the mouth he used on the woman who reached me before I could get the neighbor girl to eat a rock for cussing at the egg she’d given my baby’s name.  it’s turned up again, the dog whistle I buried.  my brother likes to say he is no later than the man his dying adores.  I still show faith my signature move.

so be it, you’re a male.  in darkness sitting on the charred rocking thing stilled by your grandmother’s approval.  profoundly meditative.  a blessing to all who have in their future, what?  proximity?  ask any female reaching for the dark phone of your lap.  who returns to you a childhood fascination with ant
for your thoughts
on abyss.

cruelty gets an ulcer.  this is my first *******.  this is your kid making my kid sick.  I have achieved total comprehension.  you are so vignette.  your kid is a licked window.  my kid is two feet can’t touch the belt of a treadmill.  my kid is love.  is *notaltogether lostly.  is if you have a pain in your tongue like a nap.

choking
inside
a whale

/ sucker
from the world
of hands

or the last
to be

invisible

to find
it’s the other
way

around-

life
a metaphor
for sport.

to know
     without

sufficient
notice

we’ve been here
so long
that none
are from
the future.

to provide
the afterlife
to those
left, those

available.  

     to realize
the town
of our birth
awaits
the return  
of our most
male
follower.

to be kept alive by a disease loyal to another.

to scroll, down, and cross
our legs.

our lost
way
of thinking

forgave
different
films

I prayed, yes
but in
a dream-

ghost
was a book
with pictures

not by its neck
my grandfather's
bottle.

his penchant
for the bodies
of things.

were the prayer
of his line
too broadly
cast

he'd say
good fish
and go hungry.

saved
every Sunday
christ
in both cheeks

and fought
all day
drunkards.

     once fattened
a crow
for his son
run off
 
but could not
watch it go.  

once choked
for nine months
a man.

so full
of stories
     I am not like my father

who died
today
in a field.

there I was

lightweight, eyesore

baby satellite
and baby
drum

imagination’s
dull witness

my hair
prematurely
cat-torture
grey

my person
the length
of a sandbox
shovel

teeth
a tooth, a commandment
from the past
lives

of milk

I was your mother. on television, one could see what other televisions were watching. I tried to tell your father you wanted a bird stuck in a frog’s body. that a sleepy afternoon is the poor man’s insomnia. he hated that I wrote down your thoughts on thoughts. by the time you get them back, you’re someone else.

said if I let him
touch my breast
he’d put his palm
flat on the road
let me run my bike
over his hand

said I could
think about it
didn’t say

it would be
all

-

my sister backed out
of teaching me
to kiss

she told me
don’t worry
as one cannot destroy
or be destroyed by

the aftermath

-

someone
in the film we’re watching
turns off
the whole room

little boy

20% off all print books at Lulu today with coupon code of LULU20

/ from [shuteye in the land of the sacred commoner]

~

[untitled]

hell is a book.

she reads it
in a room
that’s alive.

attic or no, I want
to miss
my father.

~

[untitled]

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.

~

[entries for giants]

not a thing born
nor a thing
howled at
no
you are not
again
these things

the baby
it continues
to purple itself
where it can

it crawls, but is mostly stunned
by its own
vocabulary

the dog has the tongue of a cat

this is new

~

[the exact]

father became the man his possession foreshadowed. mom had a purse full of spoons. brother bathed any form quiet enough to make the kitchen sink. I began to believe. I began to hear in the rock

the thorn
it spoke for. over the nest of a bird,

the nothing to eat.

~

/ from [MOON tattoo]

~

[catastrophe]

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

~

[moon tattoo]

birth, or god’s
way
of erasing
our memory…

this
more than you
will hurt
my neighbor’s
doll

I am a dark spot
in the ocean-

     mother
she presses
down

     if I had legs
I’d want them

the day the crows
flew into

youtube

the thing
each crow
stood for
stopped
advancing
as did

god’s future
but the men
and women
of god
kept eating

animals
and kept
praying

for individuality
to come from
being
the first

to gut
a mirror
and god

himself
began to write
a poem
with nothing

behind it

brother is digging barehanded in the backyard a hole for what he hopes is the alien of god’s choice.  as for existence, my mother’s is low on mine.  my father is keeping out of the same sentence any mention of ****** and totem pole.  no one including you cares for my sister’s worry that this no this is the bottom of a rock.  if asked, I will say I was visiting with my arms the museum of rowboats during the regional spike in baptisms we as a family failed to interrupt.

in a home
for animals
that have tried
to undress

she weighs
the child
and the child
the doll

I play my father as a man terrified I’ll return

my mother steps on a wooden block
with both feet.

stepping off,
she announces
she is going
on a diet.

my father covers his ears
and gets shaving cream
on them.

he turns me in his hands
like a dish towel
then drops me
at the base of the tree.

I transport
god’s blood
on three
disposable
razors

to my neighbor
who

on a high shelf
has a microscope.

the scarecrow loving puppet put a pop gun to the head of the soundman’s lamb.  

-

my last meal
was my mother’s
voice.

I am counting on my fingers
in front of a mirror
those I’ve known
who’ve died
of fright.

I am working the loosest brick
from the house of god
while standing on the backs
of two kids
whose father
borrowed
then sold
a crowbar.

I am telling my abuser
how to direct
with a magnifying
glass
the stream
of god’s
****.

I am charging the riding mower’s
battery, I am alone, I have a hair

on my head
for my son
to pull.

she imagined herself pregnant.  she fell behind her best years which became predictions.  I brought her a cake on her fortieth birthday to show her what I could do when given a cake.  she asked me about the men in my friendships.  candle-makers, mostly.  a few with toddlers a football knocks over.  it took a moment, but she added sound.

eating lamb
for his lovely
misheard
boy

his father
has taken
like medicine
to sleepwalking
as something
they can do
together.

if you see them
man and boy
sharing
a robe
keep your
car horn
safe.

your mother is a fawn.

he wasn’t overseas to be difficult.
he had pain in his arm, he thought

he could find a snake.  a cut-off toe.

our insides were still inside the time
that we knew him.  his arm it sorta  

came like a slug you might see freed

from a puddle’s hinterland eye.  slow

like that, wrong like that.  like these:  

hippies and father time.  a mole enters
an infected shoulder:  yours.  a mole

has been your heart, and peacefully.

your mother doesn’t know about the mole.
it’s not in the letter.

my father
the father
of a city
he was born
inside.

     father lit
by the soul
of his shadow.

-

city first, as in

city dark, as in

city first.

-

     his child a partial vow to be lonely
in moderation.

the ancient anxiety of dogs.

has winter
no levy
it cannot call.

bread;

the saying of bread.          

bald man
in a hair salon

religion.

but also, bravery.

our present loss, lost
to the foreclosure
of immediacy.

litany's take,
a rake.

treads your boy
to banquet-

passes my own
pulling a mouth
from a wire fence
and waves.
 
was not believed
a child

this faith.

the strength of my father
to **** his due.
the strength of yours, too.

be still.  and full.

has place
no debtor
in lull.

i.

it is my first time dying.

I have no friends.

my arms don’t feel
like your arms
when they fall
asleep.

when born, each of my thighs
took three
injections.

I will my scars to open.

tiny human fingers breach
the top
of an egg.

I yawn by vomiting.

ii.

my parents look the same in the dark.
one of them brings the other
white pebbles     in a glass.

iii.

death
surprises only
the look
on your face.

online
a photo     of a young
girl
after some
self harm    

inspires.

iv.

bottomless     you are snagged     on a bird

v.

nowadays, child free
is the term we use
to separate
ourselves     from being

kidnapped    

vi.

be heartened.  

suicide
remains
impartial.

wide-eyed with our father’s exhaustion, my drifter of a brother enters the new house at night to steal a less than perfect fang.  the infamous gun of our youth.

illness is
as illness
narrates.

I self-pierce.  medicate
like a missing man
at a party
for baby.

take this balloon
from me.

baby suffers
from heavy
elbow

and wilderness.

the identity
of the kid
didn’t
beat us up
is

the schoolyard
our church
of arson

the three point line
is the madman
spots
a cigarette