I was copycat
to your
baby machine

game shows were the work of grief

I was the fat kid, jumping rope

had the bug brain
of a palm reading
scarecrow, quick

to imagine
the past-

who was it
told adam
he had something
on his face, moved

he
like the ghost
itch
of deeper
gods

I was blind but now I was blindness.  religion turns water into the snow jesus healed.  high in tree I have spotted the baby before it walks.  the closest thing I can say to jogging in place is don’t be black.  my son is the museum a hospital wants to be.  life expectancy is I don’t think the world of my children.  my son is my language.  if I speak I speak skip to video.  I’d cheer but it’s not my first heaven.

our boy is gone.  boy’s mouth, boy’s knees.

I drop my jaw in an open field, turn my head
while pointing
at a kite.

     a man sets a chainsaw
beside the ax
at my feet.

man
calls the ax
a quitting
cross.

he seems so disgusted, honey, so disgusted
I lose hope.

the last time our daughter
fell asleep on my chest
must’ve been the last time
our daughter

fell asleep on my chest.

-    

    I hear you sometimes
using my razor.

satan began possessing squirrels

he did so
in the name
of footprints

my sister
the poor girl
was pregnant
with a people
person, she waited

with me

for my hands
to look
like mittens

oh, here they are.  the interested persons we will find later.  for now, this field.  my gestural father holding a broom for what he calls the welcome mat of exodus.  if my mother is watching it is because she long ago dropped birds from a single passenger plane.  if instead she is privately seen by god, then the whole bird thing was a bit of a stretch.  in memory alone I am alone.

the mother and the father enter the child’s room at different times while the child sleeps.  when awake the child sees each separately nondescript.  when fully clothed the child opens a special drawer in which a certain number of rubber ***** all the same size roll about.  the child is unaware that his or her reaction to this is universal and startles my youngest.

I have faith I will one day have this memory of occurring to god.

presently, I exhibit expatriate tendencies
in the shadow
of my mother.

     I entered this museum for boys
hidden in a mirror
on a time delay.

normally invisible, the husk
of vibrancy
has been outed
by recent
snowfall.

if you have a father
he is probably
shoveling
as if it’s the one thing
he has to do
before leaving.

it’s not, but it will do
until he has to shovel
again.

my daughter isn’t married yet
so I can safely say
she isn’t married
to a man
whose job it is
to inspect
poles
for tongues.

ice takes children from the horror film
of an everyday car.

accumulation is the only word
Ohio has
for hollowing.

headlights enter a snowbank
the way my eyes
enter a second
nightmare
wanting to see
what saw me
first.

in any weather
some of us
imagine the homeless
but can’t.

…this is god, this could be
god
gaslighting
his mother’s
online
presence

/ I never
see
the right
cricket

old Kerouac
looking for something
in my mother’s
dark
bangs his knee
on a sharp object
he calls
my father’s
nose
and retreats
to the warm glow
of the wind-up
mouse
which lights
my mother’s
lap
where slept
a desolate
thought

after whitening
the teeth
of the adult
orphan
you might have seen
on the shoulders
of a tired usher

a deep sea diver
swims solo
in a private lake

for Meg Pokrass*

before we knew what was going on, we knew the myth of what was happening and followed suit.  my kids told me I was taking their childhood.  I told them it was the long hair of their mother made me do things.  she thought she was seeing another man until that same man lowered her into my arms.  we think of him when we pray because when we pray we’ve all a job.

good with ropes; the necks, bibles too

of other men.

to the left
he had me tie
a flower.  I used my mother's yarn.  I knew

she would measure, but he'd given me
my second
imaginary

trumpet.

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

under threat
of lightning

where else

if you were injured
before or after
you fell
from heaven-

well

it’s not something
I dwell on.

     up ahead, I am a busy with

the god question

dropping you, loving you

separating
the two.

violence
is the only body
that takes a lifetime
to bruise.  

I know this guy
so to speak
calls his ****
god’s shortcut.

I can’t reach my hands.

a donated pillowcase
made into seven washrags
one for each
church window

my second attempt
inspired
by my first.

my third
a success
my fourth
could envy.

my first
a superpower
given
to my brother

who noticed
mid dream

his dream.

“Probably I’ll die like this,
a long time ago.” – Franz Wright

I will never forget hearing god pronounce your name
to a ghost obsessed with wolves

out there in the dogness

old
pencil-****
in the church
of the outhouse
tattoo / birth,

its suicide
vest / seashell

on turtle’s

grave / my shadow /

its table
set
with noise

a small fire
in the room
with all
the pigs.

a school
without
a shooting.

my sons
run out
of bread

-

their bodies
think once
is enough

-

are you barn
or missile

silo
sad?

-

I remotely
occur
to a word

as needless
as the plural

of needles

-

going forward, every birth
will be occasion
to *****

a lookout tower

-

my daughter is a cloth
cut from the vanquished
infant
once heard

not crying
in a wildcatter’s
abandoned
idea

of what constitutes
a baby

-

I read to escape the author

online I find instructions on how to make my own scarecrow.  I wake my sister and have her put on her pajamas while I take the overcoat my father is using for a blanket.  when we’re an error of a mile from home I have to push the ATV with my sister on it.  she is crying about flooding and I’m telling her what the scarecrow will look like.  she wants it to have a cape.  because my son isn’t born yet, there’s not much to like.

my guardian angel was a bicycle.

my bicycle
was a dog.

actual angels were postcards.  

I saw what I could
of actual dogs.  warpaint,

I saw what I could
of the newborn’s face.

of the four children, three are spies.  their father was put on this earth to look for the fourth.  their mother is the amateur photographer I am a one-sided representation of.  harder lives like yours continue.  statistically and in person.

I borrowed a bike from a haunted woman

a frog was asking me
what my mouth
had done

I was bound
for the orphan’s
shortcut

blood comes to me from a country of dry-****** trees. brother

as a ghost
with a snakeskin
kite. eye

after killing
the camera.

[war footing]

a parrot
sawed in half
by peace
or quiet

~

[ballerina]

dog whistle, nothing’s church-bell:

my mother, handcuffed

still worships
wasp

~

[mothers, acoustic]

we are maybe
inside
an Ohio
factory

childless and ready

for a refresher
on orphan
etiquette-

word is
there came
a cow
from the nothingness
that drank
nowhere’s
father

and sleep
is death’s
babysitter

~

[darker farms]

food
saved
from a house
fire

–

the cult following of nostalgic paranoids

–

a star, this deer

as it prays
for moth

~

[annihilatives]

the first murdered woman was not killed by her sister.

stop me
if you’ve not
heard

~
~

also, {name calling} is my newest self-published poetry collection

it is available on Lulu

book preview on site is book entire

free PDF is available. also, free hardy copy available for review.  both upon request.

poems, from it, are below:

~
~

[entries for listen]

mirror
to window
we’re moving
away

~

[entries for fixation]

the name of this scar
is
they couldn’t hide
the canoe

mom says there’s an oven
at the bottom of every lake

that I was born asleep
surrounded
by toe touchers

is art
world-building
for the geeks
of grief

have you crucified

starfish

~

[entries for children]

remember, it is dark and memory is god painting with the blood of those he would create

I was born
impossibly born
addicted

to the sound
of footsteps.

god

loves the woman
who makes the bed
of his last

believer.

the last time my father sees me, I’m trying to resurrect the girlfriend I hid him from who made me believe I could do anything as well as a man.  who kept a memoir of how she came to own certain dictionaries.  who ordered pizza and had it delivered to a house on fire.

a pendulum maleness
to the clothed eye.

     a half dropped ceiling
under which
a prediction of snowfall
sends puppy
scribbling.

a man well endowed
making like
the empty cross.

a delivery room floored with bubble wrap.

nudes in short supply.

mother’s inhaler is what you called the mirror mother held to size her mouth.  I was in her purse when she was taken.  I don’t know how it is I know things.  bones in the stomach of god.

I am at the beginning of my rope.  my son has run out of nostalgia.  in photos, I look most like one who’s forgotten everything.  my son disagrees and says I look like I’ve seen a ghost.  I think this is our first fight.  we take it outside where none of our punches land.  it isn’t long before we are throwing rocks into a darkness that’s just arrived.  such rocks come back to us in birds, or as.

sister has her tail

brother
his paints…

satan’s baby can clap underwater

a better pill would be a pill that could abuse you before they arrive.  instead, I threaten my mother with my father’s suicide.  it is not easy to avoid the vice versa at the end of this sentence.  it is not hard to be limited by the imagination.  by the verbal assault that dangles you below a dog whistle but above the tooth of a beast.  I impersonate those I love and those I love are impressed.  don’t think me untouched.

when a father
feels as though
he’s not
been here
before

the angel of near death
possesses

any idle
grown man’s
finger

and with it traces
a held
baby’s

outline
into the man’s
chest

for father
to not see

     / angel has no tricks

again, not unlike health

there’s nothing
there

it didn’t take long for the frog to become real to those around me.  some would bring it back and pat me on the head and some would laugh when I told them it’d never tried to hop away before.  some would say it was the frog that was depressed and some would pray for the frog I was lucky to have.  when it began to speak, I told myself that’s just how frogs talk.  god came to me sooner than most.  mom joked that he must’ve known I had a frog to get back to.  my sister maintains to this day she had no intention of eating the frog as she was only trying to impress the snake her eyes were made for.  by the time I woke her up, her hunger had ballooned and she leapt at me the odd leap of grief.

it’s the same in every model.  the cat is first, then the dog, then the baby the cat eats in a dream.  while I can’t speak for his cough, I can say my son doesn’t belong to god.  my fear of water snakes, though vaguely tied to my father’s shaved belly, began with a bike that was given to my brother with no one on it.

I named you once before you were born and once after.  your room was blue for so long.  you’d kick and I’d press my thumb to your father’s wrist.  my hand is still wet from putting jesus as a baby beneath a nervous goldfish.  I know what happens to people like me.

I project my stillness
onto babies.

a still baby creates an environment
that yawns
apart
a dog’s
inability
to reflect.

for each instance
of a father’s quietude
said father
gains a brother.

I think at night my bones are making glue

did my pain
mention me
at all

not to a hymn of madhouse flies

i.

I have for you a bird barely alive.  my son calls it the foot of a large rabbit.  he knows I need a way of thinking that allows thinking to continue

     without me.  

ii.

our daughters don’t live long enough to give America

     ruins.  their legs give out     but before

they collapse     we wish them    

luck…

iii.

…touch your father
see if your mother
comes back

the stone’s wait-listed heart

a god with something to prove

the common telescope of a haunted cyclops

a round of leap frog
played in poverty’s
backyard

homicide

grasshopper

I show
for the fleeing
your cigarette
attends

-

a butterfly
is at first
a butterfly’s
ghost

-

for the face
of god
I admit
I’m torn

-

go dog
catcher

white

you and I, we are kissing.  we are kissing in the bed of a pickup truck.  when we are not kissing, you are telling me about your father.  if he is sitting alone in a house, at a table, you don’t know.  we pass houses and I ask about the driver.  I don’t know why I care so much.  you have lost a button, I can see your breast, and you are closing my ears with your hands.  my head is a rock loosing the tread.  there are two poles without wire in the bed and I’m going to steal one of them.  you are looking for your button, you are praying it shows up.  I can tell you think this is going badly.  you are really looking now, it’s nobody’s business now, and I can see more of your breast.  the kissing is done with but I don’t operate like I know.  the houses are getting farther apart and soon there won’t be any.  I say this out loud and whatever you want to say about it dies with the driver as a car with three small bodies in it moves through him.  we are okay and I tell it.  you pat yourself all over, find your button had the whole time been nestled in the lip of your jeans.  I think of us when we were making out and how that button might’ve been cradled then not cradled by the hole in your belly.  you look at the button.  it’s like I’m not even there.