I offer my shoulder to the mouth of little baby angel-bait.  my wife is touching up the secret room we’ve rented for a reptile to display its sadness.  I am worried my son sees no point in knowing whether or not a slug heavy enough to snap a mousetrap has died.  to be clear, a sound twice as long as my ears made its way to god in the photo god is using.

my mother speaks
to those
I silence
in tongues.  confesses

she is not
an animal
person.  when drunk, she knows

to push
to the right
the stroke
ravaged
newborn.  as a word

barren
is a man’s
word.  as a thought

it’s a keeper.  if one asks

where one
beats a dog
I answer

in front of children.  it’s the question

leaves a mark
on the heart.

****, kid, your poems.  I took a page from your father’s thesaurus and played scrabble with god.  I came back knowing your name as code for omission.  your mother didn’t break a chair over my back because the chair didn’t break.  I worked it off in a building from the wrong twin city.  after that, my homeless jailer became your brother’s landlord.  your brother he played citizen’s parole to my arrest.  borrowed my hat on account it wasn’t full of money.  like most men, we were in love.  he had a note he’d written that would appear before a big fight it said don’t let my suicide beat you to death.

I was limping the edge of the pond so as to confirm in the world my clearance given to me as before by frogs. my punched nose was warm and my grief melted from it and I cupped my hands together for the blood and what mixed with it and when the cup was full I halved it and my already thick shoelaces thickened. soon into this drama one frog jumped from the pond and I was startled. startled too that indeed it was no frog but a toad or some form of toad. I followed it woozily from my father’s land onto the land of my enemy. the toad was dull save for its hop from water and save for its courage and save for a sickly orange spot on its back that was a star when the toad paused and a mangled star otherwise. a couple times I lost the toad, the land was new, but I knew to stop and the toad knew to rustle or in my more desperate moments to come wholly back. everything had been planned and my body wanted to be generous to the toad and it was hard not to run or use my hands or ruin this paradise that I knew then as vengeance but now as existential plagiarism which is nonetheless vengeance. I would not rub the toad over me and I had to convince myself repeatedly. the boy was no doubt inside the house as his dog was not to be seen but his sister was sprawled on two towels put short end to short end as she was very tall and her sunglasses were cocked enough so that her right eye could see mine. the toad was in her mouth immediately and then her throat bulged but was back to its original in no time. I lost the toad forever then but its orange star surfaced on the right and then the left of her belly button. I told her I would see her at school and I would but this was the last time I would see her in anything but an overcoat and the boy would try and come close but never again pin me down.

as my face
will one day
correct
my body
I expose

the elements
to my
ugliness  

-

my son is my search

history

-

headlights
when headlights
emerge
emerge
from a period
of non
worship

-

(wave your arms
long enough
you’ll have sticks
for arms)

-

they don’t  
happen
in my
lifetime
the terrible
things
I’ve done

for father*

even holding
a box
in the shape
of a hatbox
no hat
ever came from

you either
go unnoticed
or go
unnoticed

for mother*

the first thought
you have for the world
beats you
to the punch.

you are so light
two people
have to be in bed
with you-
one to hold you
and one to hold a feather
(that way)
it won’t matter
who falls asleep
second.

no one is in the room
you come into.

your mother is alone
in a desert
at night
looking
for a black dot
when her water
breaks-

then, gospel singing
in your gospel-singing
voice.

I had a thing for wizards and needed something to direct my toys.  I had a corrected overbite and a mold of my teeth.  many were tortured and some were swallowed.  I left my tools behind when I was born.  what passed through my parents came first through me.  if I was the word they loved, I was the context they opposed.

there’s something about holding the stick and there’s something about throwing it.  two things I can walk to while thinking of how my grandmother lost her first husband and only son to water.  two things I can cough into my mother’s blindfold as my father soberly misses as many trees as he doesn’t.  two silent bodies of dog named after what came.  my son after what came back.

my brother thinks he owns a small boat.  after an arduous online process, he is able to secure a place in the city.  in the statement I know myself the saddest part is I know myself in a past life.  I provide for my children.  I provide for my children the chance to provide.  let me finish.  madness is not something you tell yourself.  to my father I am the thought that got away and came back.  do not cheer.  let me finish.  

     the poor get bored.

naming
the stillborn
within hail
of the snake
loving
boy
who can psalm
a basketball

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some poems from some recent publications:

[untitled]

what seashell does for ocean
my pillow
will

for hunger.

oh dream,

insomnia’s
wiped out
city...

is this
a stone

or the mating
call
of grief?

~

[untitled]

the power
came back on
the boy
didn’t.

I had my chance
to believe
in god.

the beetle was on its back
and the woman
unable
to **** herself
ordered
online
a rowing
machine.

mother’s garden, father’s ladder.

a black cat
where nothing
grew.

~

[untitled]

church of intermission.  church of the rolled-away church my fever follows.  church of it ain’t a baby until it spits.  church of the lawnmower left running.  of the space you give the grieving horse.  church of you when you die in my sleep.  of musical suicides.  church of the disinfected high chair.  of the false bruise.  of how to become a balloon in the church of touch.

my sadness ran off
with some guy-

well ****
it wouldn’t be
would it

depression

if one could find it
in a baby.

it doesn’t kick
but you can
if you love me
make its brain
purr.

them dead, them mothers
sang
by song.

could be
it’s the baptism
of the fussiest
unrecorded
drifter.

could be two trees
one threatens
to separate.

could be microwave
or box
of resurrection.

could be
it’s mine
the shoe
before I went
to prison.

could be
an austerity measure
this disabled
son of god.

could be god
had no part.

since last
we placed
his madness     on speakerphone

he has observed
over half the population
observing
the lesser
half…

he includes that he swims alone

that his lover works for someone
in the gag order department

that the act of naming     a son
is scarce

I’ve petitioned my brother’s death to become a delayed reaction to his memory of faking it, consoled my sister who on a good day counts to three, and started The Language School of Jesus Christ.

the rich man sits on the abnormally small black couch between his twin sons who, having never been separated, begin to sob.  he touches their heads together and worries their emotional immaturity will awaken his old want to have *******.  he tries to think happier thoughts but cannot keep them from arriving in pairs.

a baby left in a cloud.  a cotton ball pregnant with a dot of blood.

     states away, his wife regains consciousness in a spacious kitchen and rubs her forehead with a hand wearing a dish glove.  her mouth moves to the words of an old poem of his wherein the leg of a preserved grasshopper was used to replace a burn victim’s eyebrow.

what time I have
to write
I spend
writing.

the insect
in the room.

infants for the end of tourism.

your mom
salting
the empty
doll.

sisters,

I am standing in my dream house with a fork from my real.  my best friend is overseas shooting lame the animals of those who eat his religion.  on the lam from white flight, my brother is holed up in an apartment blocking for a staged photograph of a fake baby that shrieks as if it’s on location.

I lasso the calf just before it makes the ocean.

overhead, a helicopter
from my past
spins.

my son says
to himself
this isn’t
your father’s
sandcastle.

luck is the stone
that marks
the dream.  dream

the stone
that marks
the dead.

the spotlight
a dog
pushes
with its nose.

not yet death
but death’s
wheelchair.

a revised
stance
on angels
as recognized
by those
one has
not met.

[in this life another is you]

father paints an abstract jesus.  my sister bites at the shoulder strap of her bra.  my brothers

to keep from crumbling
are sharing
bread.  

-

I draw a violinist.  a dog

at the neck of its owner.

-

in our imaginings
gutted baseballs

became

the skulls of small animals
through which
the wind

called heads.

-

in heaven’s garage
they’ve yet
to make
a horn
that works.

the kids have gone two or three years now without being raised.

the match
unlit
by your tooth
is paradise.    

-

a refrigerator rocks in a junkyard.

either the door has jammed, or she

is pregnant.

-

a cement wall
scraped
in passing
by one
with a stick
is the love
we have
for father

-

depression is a dog whistle.  I miss dinner sounding it out.

-

(when a scar of thunder / outs itself / I am blue)

or bluish

(like a sock in a blue
coat’s
pocket)

-

it is cruel to hang anything above a baby’s crib

-

I can only guess
I was happy
in the womb
with how
my mother
looked

-

the bunk
above mine
I call
deathbed

is

my brother’s-

he has
his own
way
of thinking

showerhead
is spotlight

-

here is a test:  circle
the parts
of a circle

(a sameness)

in the parrots
we care for…

our suicides
fight
for position

-

in the apple
air
of hem
and haw
a pacing
uncle
blank
as a broom
regards
the *******
half
of a doorknob

or

two men
carry a ladder
past a cemetery

one thought
between them

-

this nonfiction
not
what you’d
imagined

-

mother an artifact of paranoia

-

paper
scissors
milk

-

blacktop
pools
at the neck

of a crow.

half eaten
children
limp
home.

an umbrella.  a bra.  a harp.

a street we call satan.  

-

water, make your fist.  hold your breath
in a single
fish.

-

delirious
when the lights
went out
mother
would pull cocoons
from the oven    
tell us
to stop
kicking

-

it was a very strong soap
she’d use

a soap that squealed
against

the skin

her heart  
a hiccup’s
echo

her eyesight the sound of a drill

her eyes
two holes
in a turtle’s
shell

her eyes for seeing

the food in her mouth

-

the sobbing ventriloquist was my idea.  mother and father they were taking turns moving shampoo through my hair as I hummed.  doom was a color.  a mare kneeling on a bed of maroon straw.  miles off, an ambulance driver entered a silent film and tried to buy a garage door opener.    

-

children from abusive studio apartments inherit warehouse jobs from problem immigrants.  a bruise of ***** darkens the front of your jeans.  I am mugged in your dream and mugged in mine and mugged by a woman in both.  for now, this field.  my gestural father holding a broom for what he calls the welcome mat

of exodus.  in memory alone I am alone.

-

under crow
and flat
on my back
in the loft
of my uncle’s
barn
my shadow
is still
she
who upright
confessed
so loudly
that her heart
flew
into a quiet
sky
as she
collapsed

-

on television
the world’s smallest ghost town.  on a shadow

socks match

-

no longer graveyards, I tend what is everywhere resting.  I crawl like a toothache, long with her death.  the voices move from head to mouth.  

a squirrel on fire.  an act of god.  

I don’t think seeing such things is enough to put

vague
& crow
into one bed.  she is asleep

or fingered
by a man
with seven.      

-

in a country store
a barefoot girl
walks on her heels-

long stride and baby.

the store’s owner
happily shelves
popcorn, gauze

     the thought of his father
doing nothing.

-

beating my clothes
with me
in them
mother
irons
a man
from the moon  

(who giggles in us poorly)

for love

-

if my father admits in his bed that some mice are alive when he bends
to the earth
a cornstalk
and lets
fly,

I have to find the mouse
that means
other mice.  

-

wish I could dream away the bad mornings spent cheating on her sadness        

-

illness, assault.

presence
a blank
petition

-

in the end my mother was mostly an ocean dipped into by lightning.  

a mother whose hands were broken by recent events.  events that evoke transcription.

-

assault:

maid
loses cart
to stairwell

-

illness:

a birthmark, a scar, and a tattoo

eating under
a blanket

~

[hospital young]

years back I met god in some nowhere town before I was born to teach symbolism. I know what room I’m in by the tv show my mother’s watching. dear ghost, I hope you like the parrot. from what word did letter come. existence mourns non. grieve on sight.

~

[untitled]

fog overtakes toad
& boys
are born.

ghost yoga. crucifixion.

train is a tunnel
train’s never
seen.

two dead crows- I’m shoeless again.

~

[food (xiii)]

while pacing the hallway of a floor that elevators skip, an amateur eulogist pictures an error-prone barber in a bath of milk who gave as a gift a rocking horse with a bad stomach to a child healing a cobweb for a starless bear.

~

[untitled]

after seeing the girl I have a crush on sign my friend’s arm cast, I spend the weekend jumping out of a tree, trying to land on my left, in the backyard of the last person who knew to hide the head of god. I break nothing but the blood from my nose could fill a football. vandalism starts in the face. it’s dark. I treat my mouth like a scratch.

~

[notes for insect]

I will never know a ghost story

god does not

[windowless the museum of weight loss]

brother puts the basketball under his shirt so he can light my cigarette.

we born
to miss
animals.

[under god]

we are photos
of a dreamless
fact

[annihilatives]

this dream again where no one likes me

the overeater I sleep for

[infancy]

who is my brother?

a boy
fishing
from a ruined
helicopter

–

where is my sister?

being seen
by a ghost

–

am I alone?

dumbfounded
by rest

–

has anyone called my mother?

these tracks belong to the animal

drinks
from your father’s

bowl

–

is there a name?

for some
words

–

tell me there’s a church.

small to a turtle

[upside]

/ this talk of home

/ bush of the hissing baby

/ snow

that can see
blood
in the dark

/ events

my body
held

/ first haircut,

broom, crucifixion

[boy lord]

boomerang,

the toy of the lonely and the gospel

of the weak
dog…

perfection
is bad
art

food
prepares
in me
a faith

-

a wasp attends its own crucifixion

-

in an area known for being receptive to memory

the boy
drops
****

-

any advance
on god
please praise
remotely

the coloring books, the angel

wardrobe, the maternal

scoliosis

i.

diapered
fat legged

baby, propped in posture
by a stack of wet bricks
the flooded basement

provides     and provides

often

ii.          

     baby, under foot

bedpan for the sadness
of the upright

iii.

I stand
to sleep
standing

the boy balances a basketball on his head outside his father’s bar.  his mother is somewhere a girl set to play the moon in her school’s version of talent night.  his sister is giving birth so calmly her midwife is a male blown away by the fact that it’s only her second time wearing the blindfold I wore to fish.  his brother is in therapy to process the loss of others who think we’re gods when we smoke.

sister spent the summer making a horror film.
she had begun to show and father was wanting to be sober.
the depth of our poverty knew no mirror. here’s how mom said it:
mirra, mirra. it made us laugh, leave, and come back.

I relayed the lie I was told about paint drying to my brother.  he put his hands on my shoulders and resumed a sobbing he didn’t start.  I couldn’t see the wheels turning in his head but he could.  he drew for me what I thought was a sketch of god’s little tormentor.  it wasn’t a sketch.  our future interactions were followed.

inside me, the baby
is eating
snow

-

the phone is on
in my turned
off
home

-

at the top of the hill
a boy means
to hop on the disc
with his dog

-

bring back
a memory?

I am too poor

as proof of shyness. as death

rounded down.

nothing could have prepared her for life in the womb.

not an ear in the shape of god’s mouth

nor a blind hand
in a woolen glove.

as sure as death
does its job
to keep one
from further
dying

I carry

my boy
to bed
where I remove
his remaining
shoe
and am seen
doing so
by my wife
who thinks of me
as one
who acts

in theory
on a thought
to ****
some spider

we both know
we’ve lost

my daughter is seized by a dream to endure her mother’s preoccupation with death.  while waiting for his pillow’s heart to stop, my son resolves to keep the mirror’s brain.  that each might skip the parts I’ve memorized, I read to them from a room I’ve put on the spot.  when we pray, we’ll pray we were here to the idea we are.

could be
god
is god
because
our world
is the least
of his father’s
worries

I put a make believe woman through hell.

I worship the devil.
I worship the devil because my dog drowns in a water bowl.

I pass the time writing holy, holy.  

I condemn my body
as I need  
proof.  

I say to a particular no one a boy after my own heart.

I’m not sure what makes mother power off the television.
she moans afterward as if it is the great work of her neck.  

I keep an appointment to be blinded by a window washer.

every other word of my father’s autobiography
    is not so strange.

if I hadn’t ****** myself in second grade, Hector might have.
his brothers would’ve beaten him.  his unborn sister
would’ve been premature
on purpose.

    I can count on your hand the Hectors we know.

it could be that mother worries we are wildlife.
she wrote once

    depression is a dog whistle.  I missed dinner sounding it out.

between me and you, you’re the private
sort
of person
women
like.

father waits for the empty elevator.  in dream, he understands the holiness of such a place and takes to mourning the momentary loss of his interpreter.  he gives me a toy and blesses it with what he calls alone time.  his exact words are you have to like it before you’re asked.  you sleep on the stairs in a house you enter shoeless.  stay put.  the movers of my bed move my death.

the demon ***** a child in the dream of yours where it first appeared  

the mother gets less and less attention for being born

the baby uncrosses its eyes

at a lone ******, I lose hours to the handstand
the occupiers
of my city
worship

proof a mosquito in the gravedigger’s ear

kid with dog, I know, not what you’re thinking of my midwestern peace ****.  for lightning burn a stick above advancing plastic army.  make zeroed the black kid with red dog.  this I can follow.  my loyalty to shame and to the poorness of my spirit’s ghost.  god drawing himself in god’s raffle.  a woman with cigarette on a zoo outing.  bold I make her in images mine.  I stalk, don’t worry, I tell her myself.  it’ll pass being tired of god.

in the gospel to revise apocalypse
one cannot abridge obsession

one can however
follow a man
pushing his son
in a wheelchair

to a word and that word
is amen

-

for the time the wheelchair wields a person
it will use the person
to leave the dead

alone

-

but oh
to sink into the living
with such a contraption
is impossible

loss goes unnoticed.  

I made for you
a scarecrow
from the textbook
violence
of a midwestern
poltergeist
as lightning
took a step
from the baby
I crawled
beside.

be
not memorably
young.

**** I carry my untouched handprint into the past disappearance of a photographed leaf. Pain and sickness lose each their memory but lose god’s first. It’s dark in the dark. Lift a spider’s broken finger.

god
is for tying
the tongue
in the blank
face

it passes
for meaning

kissing
is how we kiss
the nail’s
brain

if my brother was too long in the bathroom I would begin to think I was handsome. fairly early on, I was able to square myself in the mirror and land a couple good ones. at the height of my endeavor I lost a tooth that had been loose for three days but I gave it to my pride nonetheless. from there, I hadn’t much hope. my brother was less and less able to stand himself and the bathroom became more and more mine. when my arm muscles began to bulge I was afraid I’d hurt myself and so I let them slacken and went so far as to draw on paper the plans for a homemade stall to restrict my movements. my brother had always been the artist and so I entered without knocking and found him face down in the tub. I shouldn’t have been able to lift him. my parents were good people and worried gently about what I had seen. I thought they must’ve known I was ugly.

i.

I watch my cigarette make the water and step from the dock onto my father’s boat.  a large fish moves from beneath it and I sense the fish is of a tearful species of fish and sense that to it my father’s boat was a shadow.  alas, fish, I am trying to know the first thing about boats.  

ii.

my father makes it hard for the cops because he isn’t hurting anyone.  he avails himself of the dense novel and uses his ***** to camouflage the riding horse.  he goes headlong up the slide and enters a realm where he is embraced for blowing a tooth from his nose.  by the time he’s using the seesaw as a surfboard, he feels the cops haven’t had enough.

iii.

my father is asleep on his back with a book across his chest and my sister nudges me like it’s never happened.  I ask her what she sees and she sees a man missing his glasses because they are on his face.  for me, it takes two fathers to begin the long process of choosing an epitaph.

iv.

I cannot mention my brother without mentioning how in that old farmhouse he saw a ghost leaning over the bathtub wearing nothing but a yellow rain slicker and how he used ten of his eleven years to push my father down the stairs while screaming don’t look don’t look

enough to make ****** mary jealous.  also how brother denied it later and called it a joke but I knew better because after the sighting I began to see my brother everywhere which made it easy for me to be there for my mother.

v.

presence is a petition.

I don’t know why it is that this thing in my father merely comes loose when in me it disappears, but am grateful that my mother can hear him getting ready for church no matter the rattling of my hunger at the weepy shapelessness of spoons.