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.

entirely the use of his body.  cigarette like a lover only there to sober his hands five minutes.  anything fell becomes the last link of a buried tow chain.  emphysema, the on again off again j-hook of his right heel run off with devil horn.  how lifts, watch him, the blank assigned weight of your firstborn without housing a single thought.  it is always, this, shoe that drops.  a lifetime of work, say it, **** your mouth away.  your mother has tried to **** him; she a lack river.  handless and is not the one pulls him out or keeps him from being.

the child, the loneliest

reconciliation…

-

it is not quite suicide, not quite

career

-

sorrow’s racket,

as in

a deer
in the path
of an oncoming
deer

-

son I carry

no one’s
blood

show me
a devil
can enjoy
lightning
and I’ll
a worm
an inch
of its life

sometimes
you’re awake
and your son
is awake
and neither
of you
believe
in sickness
the raccoon
mask
of sickness…

no god unkissed, no dirt…

and sleep, sleep
is a priest
whose hilljack
blood
favors
the cult
of the noiseless
ant

brother says

how thin
we've grown

on the fat of self.

I hold the map.
am

its only
reader.

a bone drops.  

desert & cathedral
I tell him

     the words

I can figure.

bone like that don't break.

he has come to see the marrow of angels.
and I

what devours.

and the glacial
pace
of god

talk early, walk late.  

eat
for food.

hold kitten
like a rifle, your father’s head

to god.

call my / with your

premie.