the language
I use
to warn
my voice

a letter does not reach you.
maybe
you hear
sobbing.  the lady with the dogs

she hung herself.  her bare feet

you cannot
stop seeing.  when she was told

she had a son
his death

mattered less.  you wait in the garage

most days
for your husband
to get out of the car.  it turns over, it dies.  he looks up

much like them dogs
looked up
you think

for the one at the end of the rope.

the accidental possessions
of a disillusioned
proofreader
include:

/ the asemic
pawprints
of something
swallowed
by an invisible
hypochondriac

/ paper plate
the shadow’s
last
brainstorm

/ puberty
the broth
of wound / & this

the hair that pulled me through

I slash myself to recreate the map of shortcuts your mind blanks on.  under sky, some doctor induces the angel our mother became.  two boys, while still in our underwear, are witnessed putting their heads together without knowing it is okay to be so by any father whose madness works from home.  hell, the baby with its ears could be saying look at this ******* flower.

i.

no more can you see
into another
than at your age
have a stroke
to mirror
my father’s.

ii.

     deep into the assignment of my youth
I was said to be bowing
when in fact
I was dipping
into the thigh
of Jesus

     repeatedly
with a brush.

iii.

we haven’t always been godless.

     how this persists as comfort
is a vision a fox
has

of illness.

iv.

     to fox I apply a certain wakefulness.  

v.

my father admits in his bed that some mice are alive when he bends to the earth a cornstalk and lets fly.
he confides of everything he is the most guilty of hate getting him places.

     I have to find the mouse that means

other mice.  

vi.

     (above this plain a woman’s privates thunder  / below it
      there are those
      whose tears
      are a newborn’s
      thumbs)    

vii.

a mare kneeling  in a bed of maroon straw

intuits doom     as a color     as optic

     Apocrypha  

viii.

subconsciously, I am holy and by holy
I can offer not being seen in the grocery
as my father squints into a handheld
calculator.  

ix.

to fox paw
this thorn

     from my mother’s
apnea

as my sister
inspects
her *******
in the white
piece of paper
we both
refer to
as the one
and only
ghost
mirror

I fry
god’s egg
in the plastic
shovel
I took
from a sandbox
shaped
like a coffin

and shiver
like the psychic
who with
the controllable
sobbing
of her hands
gave our seizures

to animals

they met after years of sleeping in the same bed

like two peeping toms
in a haunted
time machine

we stole eggs

more
than we needed

if caught
our mom
was a widow
and brother

would name
our church

if no animal
is there
describe
to me
the one
furthest
from a mind
harmed
in the making

he is to have
his inner monologue
removed.

his surgeon
so publicly
sad
is not
captured.

sometimes pillow
sometimes x-ray
his boy’s
seashell
ear
foretells
the housing
crisis
in a place

of worship.

a ghost on the sincerity of fear

a sleepwalker
on hibernation

god on faith, acolyte
to wheelchair

a listener to a mime
of the yawn
that tricks
grief

I am the boy Abraham and I have been brought to this room to be examined because I **** my pants.  the man Abraham is my father and there is also a young adult Abraham who hands out bowling shoes on Saturdays.  the place I am from is easy to write about.  in that place the girl I love dresses like a witch and stands for hours on a high-dive above a drained pool which is closed to the public.  she never jumps, my mascot, and pretends to smoke the same cigarette which can be seen if one zooms in.  there is no food, no water, nothing responsible for hunger or thirst.  no one goes to the bathroom except to look at the toilet so the urge fades more quickly.  I am some sort of god.  if you want to hear yourself think, each house has one phone.  if you want to hear what is now me, there are phone booths everywhere.

to those of yours
who’ve died
I give
my prayer
of being better
in one-on-one
situations.  if god is god,

let me become
the woman
I got
the idea
from.

a spider on the ceiling
in the bathroom
means father
fill
the tub.

your mother stood on water
before she learned
to walk.

something about a fly
speaks to her, the way it

enters a thought
to leave
a message…

saw satan
spit bread

I was with
my son
we were      

differently / enthralled

this sunburnt
man / unable

to eat
or put his hands
together

who then
hissed us
to take

a picture / though

I think
     hissed / only appears

in retrospect

her hair
at night
is going
places

(a fish licks through the ocean)

this is my camera
the salter of dust

two of three
children
go with father
to the movies

-

his sentences
have to them
a smoker’s
brevity

-

understand, you, that the saying
of the word
angel

is limiting
to the length
of my son’s
life

(which must not be
directly related
to god’s attention span)

two of three
children
go with father
to the movies

-

his sentences
have to them
a smoker’s
brevity

-

understand, you, that the saying
of the word
angel

is limiting
to the length
of my son’s
life

(which must not be
directly related
to god’s attention span)

I lose
at times
the names
of the boys
I hid from…

not an angel, I am allowed
to love
the baby

it grows overnight too big for its bed.  in dream it hammers at the nail’s head still hidden in the infant’s palm.  when mistaken it is mistaken for the hand it stings with a fastball.  it is all man to the boy with a frisbee.  on land it has a dog that growls in gentle code at the untouched bowls of dogs underwater.  traces of it can be found in the model glue scraped from the space shuttle that depresses your ghost.

I am not one to criticize your method of self-abuse.  examples of god set examples for.  all babies are early.  all babies are the death of blanket statements.  sending a body to hell weighs the same but is not equal to holding the bloodless ***** of the poor man’s number one squeeze.  from what you tossed off, I took this:  twins are gay.  and how your father’s suicide was facilitated by your grandfather correcting his aiming of the garden hose at a hornet’s nest.  what I left were the sounds of war presented as souvenir eggings of the same fog swallowed house.  and my mother, the missing headline of my emergence.

on the off chance
one of the buried
has a shovel
we dig
with our hands
while telling
these stories
of men
with headaches
whose women
would gain weight
to absorb
the souvenir warmth
of wanted
pregnancies
which made
some of the women
smoke
so as to be
in a constant state
of unveiling
bruises
seemingly given
by demon
toddlers
yet to be
crossed
by hunger
hobbled
creatures
being that the bruises
recall to us
the botched
renderings
of paw prints
and then we’re on
to the women
who don’t smoke
who are puppets
with frostbite
and believe
the lord’s stomach
is sometimes
bowl
sometimes
plate

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.