how horrible it must be for god to know he can read.

we’ll take them all,
these animals of disabled children.

you will not come across the alien I was molested by.

I replaced myself
like the nothing
that happened.

I didn’t know I was naked until I had somewhere to be.

can one get pregnant from being pregnant?

strays
in orange
bless
the brains
they bless
the trash…

-

what nothing
you haven’t
seen

-

the hand-me-down
travel
sickness
that cocoons
in some
what cottons
to others

-

dryness
the money
of angels

after the standoff, god calls me a rookie.

the injured
disperse
to form
a language
I don’t
speak.

belief
becomes a remark
I make
to a mirror.  my hymn

critiques
the immortal’s
wardrobe.  

I am alone.  my son
is from the future
his illness
promotes.

again, we have given the baby too much credit.  these are simply the gods I grew up without.  here is my son serenading the seizures his mother salvaged from the praying I do for my hands.  here he is repeatedly not.  here is yours the psalmic nonverbal.  here they are shadows limiting death’s vocab in a tiny tent not crawling with legs of lamb.

you need someone who will ask the serious questions.  a mother insisting on dinner.  a mother who doesn’t eat but smokes your father’s pipe as if the pipe itself has ended televised hunger.  you need an idea.  ballet shoes for jesus.  a brother who doesn’t have to shower.  that it be wholly mourned, you need to lose your mind.  you need a motivational speaker who talks to a pair of female cops as they stand over the tastefully exposed body of a teenage boy.  who tells them to go to a movie because it’s possible.  even if they’ve never seen an invisible movie.

I threw
a couple sticks
and waited
to be kissed
on the arm
while my brother
licked
from his leg
the first insect
to have
amnesia
pretty soon
after that
our sister
bought a car
that had hit
a puppy
the puppy
lived
and god
was hooked

I’ve worn black for as long as my husband can remember.  because of his photographic memory it is hard for him to imagine how things might’ve been had the unidentified person lived.  I try to look the same everyday but am curvaceous.  we have no children.  our therapist is gay, broke, a bit shy.  a changed man.

history doesn’t repeat itself so much as curse the language it just learned. this is their there. escapist fare for those still fleeing. and I thought my hands were loud. one headset per foster home. shadow envies prayer. prayer has lice and ghost

a bathroom for both dreams.

a brother
dodges
suicide
with a piece
of paper
that doesn’t
work. a mother’s
blood

goes white
at the ink
of amnesia.

bus stop, breastmilk
there was

no me.

at what would god
not
be caught
dead? speaking

is how we talk
to the words
we say.

I know it is common
in drawings
to place the dream
above the boy
having it.

the contents of my mourning
include the phrase
I acquired
in secret
from a man
whose legs
were not
crushed.

I can hear myself seeing.

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

You've been killed and they are eating
the body of your son.

What time
can do
with a crumb.

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.

The disconnected god of blood

The wasp of loss

I don’t have your headache, kid

A cigarette looks for its teeth
Sleep
for the older
wrist

of proximity’s
nearby
ghost

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.