******

god the claustrophobe



clean

as rainclouds
pause
beneath
the disoriented
heaven
of our
beloved
thinking woman’s
fireman
a cat
grooms itself
in the manner
we’ve been
to vanish



object permanence**

rabbit
named
vertigo

author unknown / who hears a poem / unlike the poem you are reading

-

the unknown wife / a hidden talent / handstands / above a pair

of slippers

-

stupid babies / don’t worry

in a remote location

-

scissors / the hair / shrinks from

     then fingers / in a mother’s mouth

-  

if dead / only his ghost / would know

    he was my father / in many ways

-

a makeshift hood / on the same head / in a different body

of water

-

children / less widespread / than children

praying

when drought came
to my brother
I left
for the city
where I found myself
blanketing
manhole covers
with my coat
for women
who gathered
on rooftops
with men
whose daughters
had been killed
for jumping
rope

a prison closes because another opens.

on a track, a train car is hit by a train.

     the central aesthetic of a father’s dream
remains a homeless shelter
with a skylight.

nourishment belongs to private property
where god     steps
on a stick.

in Ohio, a conductor’s widow wanders the wrong prison
with a piece of her mind.

I am on the train that will take me to my brother and he is on the train that will bring him to me.  he has only just seen the great bird I’ve envisioned since birth.  I make myself in his image and use his inside voice to describe the bird.  my train arrives early.  once off, I put a cigarette in my mouth without lighting it.  I pace.  a beautiful woman asks me if I have a light and I say sharply no.  I apologize to the woman and explain how nervous I am to meet my brother this way.  she says she understands.  she says she’ll probably see god before she sees her sister.  I offer her my cigarette and she takes it with her.  my bird is getting smaller and I don’t know who to blame.

at the end of light, more light.
it is why I have been walking.
since you’ve known me
I have walked.

I am leery
of your sadness- you’ve mock deer
on your lawn.

you bird watch.

you rake a single leaf, give up.

sadness is your gut is
tamped properly. when I recall

on highway of abandoned upkeep

pipe tobacco
and knowhow

my hands
make visor.

a car slowly passes
other cars. I call this car
my death, and then revise.

my most recent self published Lulu book, [MOON tattoo], was reviewed by Krystal Sierra, and part of what she says is here:

Because of the relationship between the line and white space, the reader turns back to the poem again and again, a practice that speaks to religious tradition, incantation byway of word and image, how the poem itself becomes the way God, or Spirit, communicates with us via channels we understand, the interplay between the word and white space much like what we know and do not know about the nature of the divine. – Krystal Sierra

~

some poems, from [MOON tattoo]:

[level]

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.

~

[meditation]

summer was for sexting and for watering the scarecrow’s spine. say it with me this was not that summer. as a ghost might surprise the mother and go to salt, a doll might remember its teeth.

the ball is not red. now stare

at the ball
that isn’t

(my half of the seeing eye dog

for yours
of sickbed)

oh,

our abuser’s futuristic nudes…

/ the angels
want
their dead

when what we thought
had entered
our father
left

we used him
as an alarm

god is coming
and mom
is vacuuming
stones

two of my brothers gone to see that witch ohia.  cain, the older of the two, tells cain the younger:

best break the handle of that broom you insist to bring it.  

the neck of a goat pulses lastmost into a fence’s top wire.  

their way is lit by a river soaked in rabbits.  their impetus of road by an exodus of crow.

three ants they formerly would have stepped on are allowed to resume the full carriage of a cigarette.
a man they meet says he needs nothing but this here knife and that there trailing duck.  was the duck  
he says convinced him.  

because they are sad they let the man go and later the duck which would’ve spoken had they.

some of the houses less so but all are violent.  these two they recollect me in kind, an echo’s cough.

the older cain notes the dimming rabbits and pulls one for a fire and the younger cain reveals from his coat
a second to put over the first.  they eat gingerly as two sides of a dark hat tight to a frostbitten ear.

ohia is woe.  a prank of dialect.  how I  
 
could with this list of dry grotesqueries live a good market’s hour.  I would buy eggs and toilet paper.  hope
these two
believe that.

if the unwrapping
of your mother’s
head wound
coincides
with
a tornado
sighting
chances are
you’ve heard
a crop duster
burn
in the dream
of a weary
crow

as I search
the mirror
for the size
of god’s
fingernail, a hair
of mine
goes grey

during service
a slight girl
with a weight problem
somersaults
down
the church’s
main.  

in choir, her boyfriend
longs
for a dart-gun
so he can stop
slicking
birds.

the school’s
second janitor
crushes a beetle
in the pages
of a hymnal     but the beetle
survives.

it’s heard tell
that this
second
janitor
hit puberty
without ever
getting
an *******
because his blood
became sidetracked
by the smallness
of his fingers.

it occurs to me the only place
the janitor
can hold an egg
would need to resemble
a dark
weekday
church
and that
if god

gave beauty
the world     he gave

fragility
my first
unborn
son
perfecting     an attraction
to nothing.

no babies, yet, in the newly funded baby jail.  

a pair of baby handcuffs, though, shiny as two ideas.

as for baby prisons
they are still a thing
of the past.  

with any
Ohio luck
you’ll spot a garage sale cashier
sitting in a small
electric chair.

if I am harder than most
on god
it’s because
he’s mine

the mouths
of two gods
at either end
of this alley,

open mouthed gods.

one breathes in, one out.

feels like mine
what they share.

and this dog
pulled into a store
by an owner
whose hand is asleep

is the dog
I once had
behind me

after closing
the shop
to shelve

what I had been shown
by the daughter
of the man
who hired me.

keep watch, he had said.
 
so I brought my dog
and kissed his daughter
on the back
of the knee

while she took
whatever pills
the stepstool allowed.