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.

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.

[untitled]

today I was outside
holding my son
and hummed
into his neck
a man
resurrected
to faint

-

childhood
animals
deeply
unhurt

-

this machine can detect silence

this stick
if stones
are gay

~

[tenderness]

it is there
in the way
my father
refolds
a single
grocery bag
for a cyclops
that never
arrives

~

[having a disabled child]

means:

there is a tent
being studied
by dream.  

missing
more than snow
the ashes
of snow.

footwear.  and checking
our food
for holes.

means keeping
dry
a diver’s
eyelash.  and leaving

to finish
absence.

~

[jesus]

an unhurried ****** whose character development was orphaned by ghosts

~

[high-dive. dusk.]

as if any father
could heal
a cigarette
or remove
for a grey-eyed
newborn
the stitches
from a dream
    
~

[mother praying for two]

tooth fairy gone to salt

shell of a bee in an empty lamb

~

[/ yyyy]

doll burns its tongue on a teacup breast

at your abuser’s
costume party

~

[later meaning]

my eyes meet in a tunnel beneath the museum of things that belong. sister moons the moon. mother she buries the ironing board of a crucified dentist. childhood starts at the top. the painter of stomachs eats from a footprint. egghead shreds a pillow in the madhouse of snake.

~

[eremite]

the frog in the hood of my coat
has I’m sure
a later meaning.

my brother is on his back in a field he calls helicopter.

I know my father’s mouth
by its embrace
of doom’s
unconnected
dot. there are sounds

I can’t make. like that of a boy

squealing
as he rubs
a toy tank
under a blanket
for a god
whose mother
a face

could love.

~

[highs]

eardrum the airbag stomach of a lonely doll

brain
a blue
parachute

~

[handheld]

somewhere between satellites and baptisms

grief
the daydreaming
thumb

~

[days of bread]

the image
crucified
for its lack
of focus.

the loud music
over which
you hear
make
your blood.

the weakest
electric chair
this side
of moth.

father’s grip on a rolled-up magazine.

crow laundry.

an out-of-shape
coat hanger. & (and)

the news
that my nakedness
has died.

~

[possessions]

i.

chew toy
abandoned
at the throne
of old man
scissorlegs

ii.

a claw
from the lottery
of hands

~

[promising]

the girl wearing a scuba mask is not on a skateboard. this, after all, is church. I see what you see- the writing suffer. I’ll wash, later, a pair of black socks from the minefields of the one we call birdbeak and you can be the puppet with a needle in its arm.

~

[last names]

he cracks the motel room door from inside and ****** from wasp to spider to spared cricket.  he can smell the baby’s back as it begins to burn a hole in the pocket of a bag-headed hitchhiker.  the earth is 42 years old.  a car in the lot below moves over a body and stops.  the woman in the car is ******* a tooth through a cigarette.  whatever god put in her cake is almost gone.  

~

[for Eric]

I’ve held dogs as they die. vet’s office, 1993. a bad dream is a nightmare and a good dream is nothing. is a dog’s rib. I get an idea, here and there. design the same bathtub.

~

[lost grass]

eat loudly, mouse, for still I have my baby blood. loudly else you become a fish. else I jaw ear

from the character actor’s god.

~

[clarion]

heaven is art and hell the artist. regret matters only to the creator of regret. brother hops around like a drugged rabbit. headcount is the nickname given by sisters to the outhouse built on a sandbox. an ambulance from dogcatcher’s dream puts the hurt on a flickering cornfield. our cellar is a mirror where thunder goes deaf.

~

[for daughter]

in a wordless dream I’m nowhere near anyone I can’t be.  my dad’s mirror passes out.

~

[untitled]

snake
is the best thing
for snake.

I know you’re sad.
like a yard, a vandal, a roof.

seeing the future
takes time.

~

[laity]

the unmarried wind will comb its hair in heaven
but for now
in the Ohio
of the weightlifter, that odd
follower
of stillness
who built
on roadkill
tornado’s
church

You can't drink in the bathtub if your son is disabled. The eyes are more violent than what they see. People standing on a haybale pretending to be high shouldn't be killed by a truck. There is one year of *** and two of snow. I unmirror in the dream I was left in for the bot that I was.

in the story, a newborn is placed in a mailbox.  we know of no harm and the story itself is very casual.  an angel tells us the job of an angel is to fly in front of the master when the master is ****.  we try to hang on every word.  the mailbox is the only mailbox in heaven.  our questions turn our stomachs.  some of us become hormonal and some of us identify pedophiles by future rote.  we head home in a pack.  a siren behind us wails a moment before being joined.

don’t talk to babies.  write.  write to be the first one there.  the frostbitten woman ******* her thumb has all her teeth.  walk once a week into the wrong bathroom.  worry.  bump around the house at night, noisemaker.  a depressed elephant in a walrus graveyard.  pull.  pull from your habit forming past.  be the bomb god’s yet to wear.  surround with others the baseball bat signed by the last woman to mourn sleeping beauty.  open your mouth then look at your son.  call it photography.  if spotted, be a monster.

I don't sleep anymore.
I can almost see
god seeing
a child.
My stomach remembers every olive.
I have two phones
but no favorite.

footage
of evil
things

whose people
are sometimes

asleep

-

father, footrace, fistfight

-

uphill
you’re such

a yo-yo

-

the bike
no bones
is beauty

I reach into a dream and pull out no small puberty. Every sister is terrifying. Hundreds of frogs jump differently away from a pond with two shadows. I can’t afford a ghost but can a demon. It looks at my ghost. Then at my food. Days from now, an entire train is used to transport the bones of a single mouse. I think I’m asleep. A sound thinks I’m asleep. Writing isn’t that important. You could die here and everyone would know.

There is always a mosquito on my wrist

I learned
so early
that belief
became a cat
checking
my pulse

I thought of something
the other day
mom

I don’t know if it happened
A little girl
got sick

swallowing
band-aids

That’s a weird way
for the body
to get out

of communion

I made that joke where
ever
one with
the nostalgia
of goldfish
was everyone
left

That girl was on tv
getting tickled
by a man who wanted
to still
be in Eden

Mom I saw the car
No person
it said
plainly
is here

Some boy
next
if not
for time