the food bowl
of a baby boy
is the nest
of a fool’s
bird  

~

something smaller
than my brother
has been killed

carrying bread
to thirst
in the small home
of my drugged
companion, swearing

on the length
of ah

that scarecrow
not skeleton
be anatomy’s

mistress

a bowl of brown rice
in a sandbox

while his children sleep, the father spins three bowls onto the kitchen table and waits for each to still.  he circles the table as a shell shocked circus dog.  from a box he is scooping handfuls of dry cereal into the bowls when he is informed by a memory how it’s happened that the milk is gone.  gone since the morning before last because a fourth bowl was needed.  his three children can now be heard upstairs shoving each other under the run of the shower.  minutes later three boys wrapped in towels watch as their father gags himself into convulsions on the love seat.  of the three, it’s my towel mother removes to swipe the sick from his mouth.  I get my father a glass of water.  something I’ve done before.  

looking back, I can see the empty bowls.  ahead, the outsourced eating.

as an uncle
can enter
any garage
and sense
the absence
of a nailgun
so
can a holy man
prepare
a meal
in the missing
church

when he comes back to life
his first thought
is his first

and when

while sitting beside the bathroom sink
instinctually shaking a pregnancy stick

he hears from an air vent     what I would call
a frangible keening

he stands on the toilet
and chokes himself, his creamy hands
playing gentle theatrics
on his baby fat

neck
where I see a mark

as if he's been strangled
by the ghost of a snake
that when still
a snake

slithered
from the ashes
of a tree
the tree

it was made to love

i.

in him like the sewing needle of god’s mother; is lightning.

in you a koan.

ii.

now that she wants the surgery removed
they tell her
the womb
is a hook
that looks like a womb.

iii.

everywhere work.
stalks
pitch

the golden blood
of brooms.

iv.

mother in her rocker
her eyes
tire swings
her tongue

a cat’s tail.
 
v.

fourteen
my sister
martyrs herself
under the monkey
mad
in the stoplight.

vi.

in a church
hangs a coat
with a man
in it.

vii.

does not break loose
like they say

all hell.

the father is a one-man show
of seasonal darkness.

the mother is clockwork.

the child is the child born
wearing
a tight
shirt.

the loaf of bread is the hot heart of nightfall.

the cut is a city
attracted
to a blood drive.  the blood drive

is god’s treehouse.

you can
in fact
eat your silence
forever

-

I don’t want my food
to tell a story

-

talk to me
of light, of mother’s

milk, talk

is for the hungry

-

ask my hands

-

it is always dark
in the baby
you’re having
and in the dream

I’m

if the **** thing is a boy, let it have a knot in its stomach.  if it’s not one twin, it’s another.  if a girl, find a woman who’s been to nothing and back.  

bring me a fat tick from the dog of baptism.  owl from the hair of god.

a broken raccoon
in the black hair
of a toppled
trash can.  god

saying
the tie
goes
to the eardrum.

father and the stick he swears by.

mother
braless
unplugging
an iron.  the washer of the foot

that will touch
one bag
of an erased

home run.  and.  the soft

anorexic
the washer
of the anxious
gay.

mid-cigarette
my sister
remembers
to smoke.

god hops
in place
on one foot.

most of our health
is rabbit
health.

not for nothing
the look on your face

boy

when you’ve nowhere
to put a baby.  

also,
the drawings that didn’t make the bible.

my dog dies
and I take
its place.

because he could be anyone
I use my dad
to get laid.

christ had two sons
his daughter
ate.

I am at the truck
getting ice cream
for the overly
nostalgic
girl
who refused
to cut through
the cemetery

though the man says
it’s all
****
in the fire pit

he holds
in disbelief
the sadness
of two
*****.  dog is as dog does

to the dying
of its language.

its father tells god how it was briefly haunted by two ghosts that began to see each other.  it doesn’t mention by name the who’s who of having babies.  by the scar of milk in its belly, god accepts on cruelty the continued presence of the left handed coalition of something in the water.  a good mother burns what’s been devoured.

I puke sand
into the infant’s
mouth
in low
praise
of the male
form
made

famous

by a statue
that sold
not
for its representation
of a dominant
existence
but for
the delicacy
with which
its creator
handled
the angel’s
*******

as ahistoric
exit
music

plays

you leave
the beast
in the *****
of its
amnesia

-

themes for prey

-

infant cinema

sister
she bleeds
in the bath
thinking
we’ve finally
run out
of water.

of the cheering
mothers, my mean
***
mother
wants to be alone
with the two
it took
to cut a baby
in half.

myself
I take it on the nose
the baseball
my father
doesn’t
crush.

I feel nothing
for her
but also
nothing
but-

she is
then
a writer, partial

to now, and to now’s

book.

is
then
prayer, loyal
to the past
most

current, to the believer

who contacts
touch.

mom would start in on god so fiercely that we became preoccupied with doors.  we got to saying and I’m taking the baby with me at the close of anything said with passion.  by the time our speaking allowed for speaking parts, you’d think a cameraman had asked to use the bathroom.  father had his moments.  being thin is an adventure.  this egg has given me an idea for a different kind of chicken.  

agewise, I was closer to my parents than most of the kids I knew of.

dreamt
I was ****
on rice
beach

-

dreamt a mother had gone to the desert
for fish

her son’s
fish

could eat
while swimming

-

two martyrs
share a camera
both

call
touch

-

dreamt sleep
was the eye’s
blood

relative

your son’s disorder
is used
by some
to draw
a straight line, a sleeping
circle…

-

my soul is eating all my food

-

agenesis
of what
of nostalgia’s

panic

dad says we live on a rock from god’s garden of near death experiences.

says throw a ******* baseball.

-

I could not see through my father
so I put my hand there
and it became a baby
with all its fingers

-

I was not raised by scarecrows.

had a toy that answered to wolves.

shake a broom
at the sky
then make
the ocean
watch

-

have a kid
in the next

life

-

to a highly
visible
other

become

attached

-

marry
and ruin
sight
unseen

you will never be
a virus

-

the animal’s moment of bliss
before it is named

-

*******
as the seizure
had
by hologram

-

the cyclone
that makes a baby
you can’t
put down

I am half
the survivor
I ate for.  

I took my son to a bowling alley and gave him an egg.  

my daughter’s sense of touch
was so delayed
she lost sleep
thinking

of all the things that had turned into her hands.  

communion was god’s plan to leave heaven.

alone
I can cover
two handprints.

the rooms my father enters are bugged.

mother is dumb from pretending
to hit her head.

talking is hell.  hell belongs
to a little
devil

that shrinks.

you throw a cell phone at a dog, okay.
pick up the phone
and find
the dog.

let god think
he sees
our puppets.

memory proves god
in that it proves
god
is lazy.  

she oversees bathroom breaks for the crucified.  

I was born without a twin.

the lost baby
for a moment
is doom’s
afterlife.

I don’t think I can be kind anymore.

alone time
is patience
as melodrama.  the second coming

of my father’s belief
is a memory
that talks to itself
while saying
don’t make of me
a habit.

dear godless koan,
my wheelchair has an ashtray.

there’s the god I remember.

I’m fasting
for two.

in our own way of toying
with the disappeared

we name
weekly
a new

inside animal.  

that something comes when called
separates

the lonely
from the missing.  if it matters to god

let it matter
to god
the eraser
of lightning.  in this Ohio

one is always a day behind being destroyed by the past.

the prodigal son of simplicity

-

the pill popper’s
demographic

-

the mouth
as it keeps
the face
from parting

-

the canyon
of where
not
to snort
the ashes
of risen
sheep

-

paper
and the cup
it’s being

when toothpick young you see a snake go mad with second nature and a sponge dragging your mother through nothing’s data

be the abuser you want to victimize.  repeat your father’s compelled evocations.  if fat, absorb your mother’s least favorite hiding place.  if not, borrow your brother’s future.  plan it around a mirror.

the blood
the spiritual
eyesore
of the woman’s
body
mirror

-

here is what it said, it said
I think
I have
a mother
whose hands
he tells
apart

-

christ I’m close to my face

outside the garage door
of a cement building
I break no bread
with the silence
of my nose

what a clown

-

the wound’s depth
leads me
to believe
in a part
of my father’s
leg
I didn’t know
I had

-

mother’s pain
is other
pets, the devil

is the devil
forever

-

this egg on my face
is from the eye
of yours
that hatched

in a small attic
a boy
on all fours
being weakened
by a spider’s
dream
is putting
an ear
to the roof
of his sister’s
dollhouse.  for making

the wrong
sounds
for animals
poor sister
was lowered
into the baby
you were born
to lift
by two
scarecrows
you’d think
were separated
at death
for the way
they don’t
carry on.

thing is, my eyes are rarely bigger than my stomach.  mother says I have a face for makeup.  I babysit often.  victims, mostly, of tooth on tooth violence.  my brother drinks to our father’s medicine.  water that’s been walked on.

the nonfiction section in my father’s library of sleep
is faith

-

mother comes to me in a dream to tell me she’s thinking of pulling out

-

epilepsy isn’t something you can see.  clearly, it’s the snake
one tries to give it to

-

when people are gone, they’ve gone to ask

to tell god
he swallowed
a thunderstorm
you will need
a seashell

-

I say to the boy
that before
this brain
of his
there were other

brains
the angels
thought
were bugs

-

malnutrition
can close
a wound

-

on the moon, my name is Noah

the woman who doesn’t believe in light
can fix your mouth

-

I have no double
to love
my triple

-

the man with no teeth
borrows
a ladder

I used my nearest
sister
to strike
my brother
who’d wasted
the last tooth
of his horse
meant
for a slingshot
on a meal

for a scarecrow

-

the power
to mother
went out

-

father
compared
puppets

-

our heaven of socks and string

dad loses a brother while drawing a straight line for a haunted circle

-

I tell
two jokes
well

in the shadow
I’m in

-

no one replaces my father like my father

prayer
dedicates
for god
his time
to memoir.

fiction is the blood of a short person
spilling from a tall.

I enter again the room of the screaming man
who was screaming
when I left.

silence is par for the quiet.

the conditions for mentally composing a suicide note for his sister are less than perfect.  she’s sitting on his bed with a cigarette in one hand and his baseball glove on the other.  both hear three traps snap shut in the kitchen.  sister gags and it makes him think about gagging.  now no more, these were the heart of the note.

I pour soup into my father’s mouth so he can find his teeth.  when he passes out I tell the carolers he’s gone to the city for a blindfold.  my girlfriend likes it when I send people away.  I was born there.

I orbit
the idea
of an animal
not thinking
of itself.

to err
is hunger.

to see the stalks keep needle at the child’s mid morn journey
to scarecrow

is enough. my fist leaves me like a coffee cup

set down. even the scissors

are ghosted.

I can dream my son’s weight in birdseed

bird
the swimmer’s
bread