we know he’s sick. ya body, ya body.

an angel of nonsense, this dying…

god’s
inability
to memorize…

/ I will say to the maker of doors

your mother
gave birth
standing up

[magic pills]

a doll taped to a skateboard. you get the idea.  mirror for doghouse, nest for traffic light.

[mystique]

/ boredom, falling short
in a mom’s
coldest
child / I understood

your movie / is there a meal

choice

prepares, or a less

direct
psalm / a taller me

where ovens
talk

[scrap chapel]**

a black tire, the bed
of the fisherman’s
crow- death and guilt

genetic-

same dream, same bear-

the afterlife of god

– tree of more

the room is no longer
the sick
relative
room.  

our guest is discovered to be a lack of absence.  

here and there,
astronauts prefer
uncalled
to earthbound.  

it wasn’t until I was reincarnated that I began eating animals.

I knock on a baby’s head, a light knock,
the someone home
will need
your voyage.  

lakeside, we forgive
the lone thought
as if the thought
is as alone
as the one
underwater
who

     visible only
to the orphan
form
chain-smoking
beside her clothes

does not
repeatedly
surface.

when I think about you

I don’t

some eyeless thing eating for none

a volunteer
to snipe
the crucified
dentist

appetite’s bedsore

a baby taking up for a chicken

in the only finished scene
of my father’s
documented
seizure

a tin woman
eats a cricket
before a paltry
congregation
of children
hired
in spirit
to distinguish
an aerobic

from a cerebral

doom

how far we are
from soup
when mother
burns her tongue
trying
to convince
god
they had

the mime and the mute
the same
childhood.

we love her so much
we use our brains
as often
as baby
spoons.

first base is a landmine.

there’s nothing to say
we weren’t
here.

bothered
by the parting
and not
by the red
of the sea

my mind goes
to the same place
to be unique.  

it is here
I worship your son
even as he models
disguises
for the father
I’m not.

as for my own
son

I am his memory

of where he put
the earth.

in the creek of tomato silence
where my father saw
what it was
god
could not eat
there lives
a tiny whale
fooled
by emptiness

I was dreaming of you kissing me just softly between my eyes
and of children chasing a lamb around the silence of a grave.* – Alex Hoshor

I comb one hand with the other. beside me my son moves his jaw front to back, his chin massaging the ridge in the skull of our new puppy. we are snug in a velvet chair. my groomed right hand was last week reset by an accidental flash of fire and to look at it now makes one think of snakes veining then leaving the earth.

I fear I may soon have to field the proffered inquiries of angels lobbying for a pet heaven. I fear that fear is just something we say.

     the dust on my daughter’s dollhouse worries me. disuse worries me. these small shoes on step at the dollhouse door.

it is the simplest thought that it could’ve been my boy, my girl, at flame. but enough that sleep of late seems cat nap to its greater insomnia.

     awake, a mob of naked children some saying excuse me move gently past or leap the car or belly under. I walk from it slowly as if I am pregnant or as if in front of me one is pregnant. I lose my foot on the discarded handle of an axe and lose my way thinking it is the found arm of a puppet. I know I am bare because suddenly there is sand in my toes and the pregnant women are here to sunbathe. it’s the gas can tells me turn back.

how long have we been friends? the length of my belt, bed of copper or garden, removed with my left hand and laid.

in one room
a light is on
in another
off

-

I live with my parents
hymn to mouth
delivering
fluency
by hand
to the language
of vicarious
passage

-

gender peasantry
is about
to become

a thing

-

mom, dad

I don’t think there’s world enough left to be quiet in

-

my bad hearing
I take it
with me

a chicken with its head cut off
takes part in a melodrama
fit for a swan

-

both halves of my daughter
live thinking they are survived
by the other

-

mall nuns.

just nuns
taking a shortcut.

-

my daughter uses a pencil
when pretending
to smoke.  

nesting failure

makes her sad.

-

I spend my days seeing things.

as if
youth is a museum

-

poverty isn’t

i.

horrors of the gentle;
a list.

father

in a son's grocery.

all things tower.

ii.

I am weak but only for you.
I am weak but only for you.

iii.

if your only fear is that you will be eaten
you are not

afraid.

iv.

the mirror's
most fervent
devotee-
has no face
 
and in these last hours
has no face.

v.

perfectly round
the muscle
that slides
from its arm.

vi.

state your grounds

for burial.

vii.

a scroll, flat.  or a tongue.  

viii.

an elephant can be opened
with the tusk
of another.

its belly can accommodate
most families.
 
ix.

the under-shepherds
under

the train

cannot lift
a single crow.

x.

what one takes for god's coat

is probably
just a moth.

xi.  

my house
is your
inherited
house.

          and death its own angel.

employed
was the angry
punk
to recite
the warning
at the end
of a drug
commercial.

the thinking behind this was sound.
the side effect of this thinking

gave the punk
a tenderness
to his voice
none expected
his mothers

to notice.

it wasn’t exactly the voice of god
but from a god-like stupor
came god

to his son
who was his
and the punk

sang

at thirteen years of age she began seeing single.  I report this from my own dream of becoming a priest.  as her father, I can prove her first twelve years were skillfully copied by boys and girls alike.  as her mother, I am so so lonely.

from crow
to anthill
lose
the thing
that’s there

telescope, craft your grief

god is what
if all
believe

being alone never hurt anybody.  I ask online about a coat hanger.  in person about a stork.  symbolism is dead.  it’s not that kind of garden.

stood up
by his thoughts

one of my eyes
is my father’s
alcoholic
eye.

says anonymous

a blood
dipped
balloon
is not
the baby
the angel
had.

says mother

into moral
isolation
the hands
you bring
are dry.  says hers

sleep
orphans
fatigue.

in the tomb of my father’s influence
a single
****** on
juice box.

     assigned seating
in biology class
a giant     a boy
beside the me
most grotesque
and we share
a model
heart     as a found
piece
of gum.

in cafeteria I am untouched
as a tray of food     I fraternize
with my new name     jovial
pisspants.

I *** cigarettes
from the butcher
gave boredom
a fat
lip

/ death has been trying to guess my age

he arrived from work at a normal hour and made a sound.  she called the cops by mistake.  she put the spout of the tea kettle in her mouth.  he watched her cry and went to bed.  the sound he’d made was so weak that when the time came she assumed he’d come home late.  she kept it to herself and stepped on a scale.  he joined the army and watched a soldier toss and turn.  she gained weight in her sleep while he commented sensibly on the loss of his uniform.  apart from the occasional mourner, no one went outside to ***.

when I say church
she says
widow
then admits
it wasn’t
her first
thought

was church
mine

I use god to spy on the gifts he gave me.  youth is a type of wheelchair.  I can see my facebook page and the back of my mother’s head.  I talk so fine my baby talk is for show.  memories are like animals, not made.  my father is happy one of two dogs has learned to shake.  I can look at my hand for hours and not forget its name.  hand.

I can trigger
shame
in my sleep
the beauty
I’m made
to return.

it takes illness
three seasons
and absence
one

to go
nowhere-

explain to my ghost

how my son
has two-

there will be other kids

a weaker
doorbell, a dog

underfoot
as we fry
in church-

I have just had it written down for me how I am not classically racist.  I am alone.  I am brief stay of bullet.  god is using each hair on my head to scribble on my son’s thought process.  when I think of crab legs I think in color of the lightning bolt it snows inside.  I miss mom.  gospel, gospel that I hang these rags for invisible crows.

there is only one creature
doesn’t know
how long it had

to destroy
the world

on doctor’s orders, the girl forgets herself by allowing the water to turn her baby brother into a prune.  mother tells father that god has spoken and that the man in the house is not a cop.  the girl has seventeen sisters to which the man has brought the seventeen boys from town voted most likely to have teeth a year from now.  the mark has begun to fade like parents after ***.

mothers
while jumping
rope
reminisce
on those
crucifixions
not postponed
by thunder

Q: what is a ghost?

A: you have a mom and god finds out

you have to count them quickly

the bite-marks on my son’s arm

-

either you touch a goldfish
or become
a dentist

-

does it matter whose dream
my mouth is

-

make art and make it empty. god has run out of room.

it gave me nightmares, from mating call to church bell, that air conditioner in our third floor window. thematically, the poor are closer to death. my people don’t move. god is where you left him. god where I put.

as you do not struggle to recall the titles of those empty sermons we composed while biking uphill after our sister’s head, I tell you that a baby eats like jesus in a haunted house and that dad was right the lawnmower dies because it knows where in the yard his mom was deep enough to bury doll and I deny that hibernation is real

(is more a ghost started by two wise men dressed as animals

i.

in a letter to my son:

     there is only so much knowledge I can stand.

in his letter back:

     I was finally able to draw a mouth.  I drew first a box, then lied.

ii.

a gutted refrigerator rocks in a junkyard.

either the door has jammed, or she

is pregnant.


iii.

when silent prayer came into fashion
my daughter said her first word
and told me
what it was.

iv.

anecdotally,

they were Mr. and Mrs. Nothing

and eloped.

to heal her father, she asks me to brush her hair.  she promises that when I’m done she’ll not only show me the scab but also remove it so I can see where her batteries go.  the knots in her hair are ungodly.  she says to leave them.  she says she can get any cat to come inside.  ******* is new to me.  I almost announce aloud that I must look often like I am trying to get a pair of scissors to eat snow.