a distraction that doesn’t explode.  I’d say children but nostalgia is still a child.  head, I need a volunteer.  god’s reply in the form of a sext.  a brick taken for a sponge by a bout of sleepwalking in someone I can shower.

this year’s
nativity
will require
the latter
non-speaking
parts
to contact
the former-

please see my brother
to reenter
the lexicon

your chance
for a lifetime
of ***

the insomniac’s apple tree and a pig paler than its own star

the pinky swearing ghost of my rib

your father says pets are for decoration.  my father says pets are for storage.  your father has a boat.  my father has a boat called the buddhist window.  our fathers go boating.  our mothers have in common the land of two left feet.  your brother doesn’t speak when he’s writing ace dialogue.  my brother doesn’t speak because of a brain disorder.  our doctor has good news and bad news.  you have a top bunk, I have a bottom.  our god is not real.  you say he has a sense of wonder.  I say he healed too quickly.  your legs give me sea legs.  our mothers balloon

and dot the horizon.

from the second level of a parking garage
we drop baseballs
in hopes of hitting
the discolored
mattress
we pulled
like a magician’s
tablecloth
out
from under
the sleeping
man
who by all accounts
is still asleep
abandoned fully
to ****
dreams
where one or two
of us
will find him
and spoon
his eyes
to ask them
what more
could they
meet
but for now
what metaphor
thinks we are
is game

mid polygraph, I lose
the baby

/ the loneliness
of its food

pretty early your brother
is a dog
believes it can leap
the electric
fence.  red handed

is the daughter
of empty.  indian rub, noogie, crown

of thorns.  the village suicide

a shill
for whimsy.

in most of your fields an elder woman with a polaroid camera waits for a squirrel.  

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

a recent accident:  the lame girl knocked into a box of baking soda which spilled and ghosted
     a roach which disappeared into a white cane then reappeared on her hand.

less recent:  the smaller boy lifted in the grocery a bag of dog food over his head while the bigger
     pushed the cart into his back.  

the short period of time the match goes unlit by your tooth is paradise.

on the life of his mother

loneliness
was the spell
he could not
recall

the map my birth destroyed
for trying
to mother
place

-

the swallowing sound my father starved beside

coming he said from a stone

-

mourner at the tomb of insect

I drop
down the back
of my brother’s
t-shirt
a wasp
and for years
he has
dry skin.

there are words
our mother said
that we’ve used
to protect her. this day

(to that)
gunshot
means gather
eggs. sleep

is your shepherd’s
prison.

its gaze
a eulogy
for distance
the animal
is mostly
pity

this dog, the stump of a great tree possessed by a kindly demon.  a woman cradles the homely thing and shares a dream with her husband the poor man’s empath.  I squeeze my infant son so lightly his age stops.  one day yours will be too young to remember impressionism’s grocery.

I am my own worst departure.

my father
a rock
trapped
in the worried dream
of his contortionist
mother.

I am gentle with the baby
though it screams
his face is getting away.

whose face
I want to know
before passing my want
onto a morse code
present in most
blackbirds.

speaking of blackbirds

I hear one has been tapped
to become
the dying parrot
of a priest
who’s fashioned
from a still
moving
train car

this church
that must’ve been
torture.

as you are sworn
to silence
by the man
your father
skips lunch
to feed

it is okay
to drift
between

(stay with me)

brother
suicide
and brother
note

the twins
of an only

sorrow

every day is a scar’s birthday*.  this is how I am able to start most of your sentences.  I praise your god, you worry, and worry keeps him from finding out.  on the day you started talking the rooms were horrified.  the termites fled your blood.  a cold stone appeared outside beside a stick.  the home’s most loved dog died without spatial awareness.  your mother began to compose a series of poems by Franz Wright.  for inspiration she put her hands in the dog and in doing so dropped a sack of black groceries.  a thing that changed over time rolled into your father’s mouth.

error

in the story
a father tells
to blood flow

of how
she became
eyesight / sloth

in the maker
of kites

since the bee sting, my son is a staccato of worry.  in his six year old frame there is not room enough for any belief that isn’t a bumblebee waiting six years for him and him alone.  I have to enter that darkness.  even with the catcalls of real suffering.  even cradling

your daughter.

being operated on
helps me sleep.

I was your age
when nothing
had been done.

the turtle in my father’s backpack,
the turtle loose
on a moving
school bus.

I crawled into my mother’s bed
and waited
for my nose to bleed.

you find the cut
like you find
where your daughter
is cut.

a sister ties
knot after knot
and opens
a window
only to *****
in a downstairs bathroom
from a fear
of heights.

god from a previous marriage.

as a ****** on finger becomes a borrowed cigarette,

what we don’t talk about
when we do
pools into mother’s
fat shadow
and / or

pregnancy
glow.

the man slaps himself
so hard
I am sure
the mirror’s memory
is for show.

god is god because he continues to believe
he willed himself into being.

my boy drags his feet.

rest the eyes
above ground.

I am in the saddest grocery
waiting with my mother
for the happiest
bike repair
to open.

the head deformed
is what the head
would want.

a shy band kid with a patch over his left eye

a crucifix stuffed in the front of his jeans

showing some belly
    its button made for the head
    of his small
    jesus

barefoots his dead father’s river

    cuts his heels
    each on a half of a split beer can

and is seen
by one of two boys

their treehouse
decorated
with stolen things

all abused

a brother sleepwalks and beats his sister. daylight, brother looks for her abuser but can’t stay awake long enough to catch the person he doesn’t know he is. sister fears what he may become. I have two children, Object and Permanence. they examine my spotless body

like aliens

who cannot hurt their own but want to.

–

boy has no name
so town
has no name

–

when my younger brother was born, his program made him human. because of this, my mother was thrown in jail. my own program gives me the power to look like anyone I’ve seen. I need you to write down what you look like because it’s me to the rescue.

–

her hand is a ray gun that can only stun babies not yet born. her grief is a time machine that wants to grow old.

–

as they had no memories of being children, mom pretended she had been their mother and told them stories of the funny ways they’d been in trouble.

i.

talk myself outta church.

ii.

ain’t sad enough not to goof on a tricycle.  jesus.

iii.

nuns in garters.  I can’t remember
or be expected to
all

the titles.  but that one, we’d out

our knuckles.  

iv.

she slid under me.  it was like
she was able,

had space.
 
v.

I loved a boy for his dog.  broke a ruler
for my ****
in half.  after that,

did things to my knee.

vi.

are afraid most water snakes of water.  spend they
lives

being fast.

vii.

to keep us from being poor
my dad
kept us

in one room
at a time
so we’d have rooms

all over.

viii.

batman’s mom had pearls.  made it hard for me not to be
******-up.
 
ix.

storms don’t have doors.  imagine my talk.

[story]

on the shell of my brother’s first turtle

the inscription

campfire
at the end
of the world

~

[impact]

as for the tree’s supposed headache, I don’t want to give it teeth.

your twin has tried to leave a dream.

~

[his body a small sorrow]

the proofreader
of grief

~

[akin]

just born and his bones go south.  cigarette, first-aid, airport.  off-brand invisible ink: a memoir.  I want knowledge to be sadness.  cassettes went away because we stopped recording god.

~

[you were born the day your body came for you]  

photograph
what you cannot
lift

~

[white movie]

death’s dog wouldn’t **** a pony
says the man only men can hear.  

repeat after me
says the baby.  
nothing’s publicist.

for you I would covet the broken arm of a snake

in grief’s
heaven

two brothers come to blows over which sister likes fast food more.  a man we want to love is shadowboxing a snowdrift from the parable of touch.  blood is a food group.  I pray to my hair.  call my footwork by name.  take my time

with amnesia.  

baby facts include being born again in the museum you were carried to.

I lift baby onto my back.  baby is twenty nine years of outsider atmosphere.  baby swallows and my stomach becomes the pecking in my stomach.  baby is distracted by the attention eternity demands.  baby drops and my mind enters a snowball disappearing centermost of a dark summer pond.  baby’s mother rafts workaholic to where work suffers to invent for the harmless

today this trap door
for an unfinished
fly.

I was an entire baby and then a picture of me as a baby.  I had as part of the **** shaming process a father wheeled in and out of the sun.  here is a boy with a red brick looking for an anthill.  the sun was out.  I brushed from her bare back a piece of straw and it stuck to my leg.  in the barn I built another barn so I could go to both.  here is the eater of stones in the privacy of an outhouse.  I lie to her face and then to nostalgia’s outlook.  the collapse of my favorite cow is followed by the cow’s collapse.

the poor are beaten
from the future

they get off work
the day is hot
it's ungodly

as ungodly as placing a single chair in a garage

the poor get home
the chair remains in the present

the dog
can't afford to be here
appears mid-scene
in the backyard

the poor imagine
an electric fence
scrounge together
the amount they would pay
to fix it

& smile as they would smile
at the mindless sap
whose job it would be

whose chair it is

a father and son argue outside a small town barbershop in windless ten degree weather.  inside the shop, which is closed, the barber’s wife is clipping away at a wig.  nearby, and quite by accident, an invisible man uncovers a fainting spell before which some will disrobe.  namely, women declaring that the eye is always naked.  who are these women?, ask my teeth, which are snow.

father arrived
with a convincing
deafness
in one ear
a broken pair
of handcuffs
he'd named
the left hand of god-

mother had called him from sleep
with a birthmark my mouth

the letter of our father’s suffering gets better with age.  in longhand he writes of a feast, of the fish made out of fish.  in childlike script of the child-actual, our father speaks to the gun he wants to own.  dear gun, he writes, but his arm locks itself in tic and fails to reset.  behind him, we perhaps foresee a pup pawing at a full length mirror.  as tonic, his mother suns herself nearby on a gravel driveway and her boy dips a small net into the back of her head.

the anxiety of my body arrives
before the patience
of my mind

-

     my soul is a pop gun
or is
convinced  

-

          I Apologize

For The Eyes In My Head – Komunyakaa

-

for the aftermath
of witness

three skinny kids, boy, boy, girl

beat on a fourth
and leave him
wheezing
in what they know better
than to call
but call anyway

     forest.  the beaten boy

swoons
into tree after tree
and loses
his memory.  

     he spends a few good hours trying to pin
the small shadows
of overhead birds
beneath his feet.  

he thinks there might be a girl
watching him, that she might weaken
for one

who possesses
odd powers.

it is coming to an end but I am still very proud to have kept my hands from my eyes for so long.  as for my ears, he hits me for letting them ring.  I hear by example.  I hear your father doesn’t need to look to know he’s been caught by his reflection.  as a last act, I hold this baby over a rain puddle, the devil’s television.