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~

some poems from books available:


[male music]

in the creek of tomato silence
where my father saw
what it was
god
could not eat
there lives
a tiny whale
fooled
by emptiness

~

[afteresque]

what bone am I, stillness?

what can I tell my son
I carried?

what is it knows me
that isn’t god
by the humans
I am
in my sleep?

infancy, what overtakes
your period
of mourning?

~

[pocket]

I am kicking myself over the surprise my brain ruined. nearby, a man misremembers his trip to heaven while a woman blames herself for making it doubly hard to leave. the size of my death is the size of any deer would die for a sugarcube. my father can’t find what he’s wearing that isn’t his. mother she is off buying foods that share a ghost. I call to my sister but know openly she hasn’t been deaf from the day god believed her legs were part frog. I have not heard of the spoon that has a past. something in my stomach wants to see a star.

~

[church bell]

the waters recede and god

good for him
saves

with the carcass
of a deer

mama’s
parking spot

/

unrelated, I have begun to see

the fat kid we surrounded for pulling a knife on a bird

I had a dream you came to me in a dream to tell me my book put you to sleep.  that a book is no way to live.  you showed no signs of being sick and your apparent health was disorienting.  a man stood behind you whose sole purpose was to know who he was before I did.  it bears repeating that over time I’ve added an all white parrot to my shoulder of choice.  on the one year anniversary of these dreams ****** preference can happen to anyone.

the boys are off to hang a turtle.  I didn’t know I felt nothing.  her father impressed a piano from puppet heaven.  but pregnancy was all god knew.

dreams my dialect coach never had. birth and the boring outcomes of immediacy. oh grief, the first to mourn the fast learner. it’s your story, but you can’t name it resurrection, your spacecraft, without considering the mortality of your audience. I sleep crooked while watching ugliness. I love my brother like a leg but he brings to choir exit music for nomads. what does god think of the future? we carry the virus that killed our ghost.

it is not suicide to bomb god’s shadow.  I am the dot my father calls button.  my son’s mind would’ve given oxygen too many places to go.  his body happened overnight.

we stomp the child monster.  my blood goes so far as to break its promise to leave my body.  a dog with a broken jaw whimpers beside the unthawed baby of the odd seamstress whose love of bubble wrap is genuine.  god says in the same voice step away from the vehicle as a boy close to his attacker touches himself under his breath.  The Jesus

can’t hear in the dark.  the last thing I see is making this up.

mother, mine, in the footage god used to justify creation.

swallow the egg before it explodes.

the future of my ant farm
is the mirror
delivers you
as advertised
to satan.

in this version of my father’s bully
I am always
a boy.

I kiss my son’s foot.
his parachute
does not
open.  I am taken

from the dream
by childbirth

just a face
I make
at god.

I panic.

a woman with a spotted neck
asks me for a drag
as if I’m hoarding
flashbacks.

is my son still sick?

would amnesia know
it’s outnumbered?

in country
I knelt
openly.

an ant carried an ant
from the shadow
of a mushroom
like luggage.

ache’s password
is ghost
I mean
what I hear

...had to put aside
for the moment
that the sick
angel
was in fact
an angel

it needed immediate attention

it said god would know
he’d helped it

not someone
you want
happy

do not open
until
I am born
this love letter
to the unreadable
child
who spoke
for god
to god
in poem
the lesser
pity

do
tell my brother
if he has not
yet

wrapped himself

in police
tape

that lightning
above a snowplow
puts a creature
on the roof

allow me, wind, my unnoticed resurrection and forgive my smaller ear. the *** we had saved to cut the bread of bilingual angels is now a ghost watching sleep improvise. church bell beats dog-whistle and rocking chair empties horse.

the boys
are not
taking turns
punching a snowman
in the face.

a car
slides by…
someone inside the car
snaps a picture.

     these Ohio winters
glaze hell
blind.

I bring
to city
a pen light
that this time
works.

earlier
in mock
fit
I shook
my head
for the blood
in my ear
and listened
to an ant.

her last words
were oil spill
or so I thought.

she went on to say
very daughter-like
poor bird, so small.

I want god overwhelmed.

my boy’s mouth
couldn’t be
anywhere.

God thought I was a dream.
I’ll love you in heaven.
I didn’t read
All of your poems.
They didn’t change my life.
God told me in a dream
That angels
Throw eyeballs
At scarecrows.
I get weird
Born
And ******.
I am afraid of my children
And my children are afraid
Of their friends.
I wrote in my head a song
I wanted to hear.
Owl, whale, crow
Is the only
Order.
Writing about god doesn’t mean you’re smart.
Barton you can’t
Use
Like that
The animals.
Word choice
Is a hoax.
As far as last lines,

Roll that tiny spider
Into a cigarette
For years.

mother is in the zone.  is writing a birth scene for a specific kind of person.  she has this window she’s named god’s narrow.  my only job is to leave my father alone.  I am allowed one imaginary friend as long as it’s a boy when I share it with my brother.  it keeps getting sick from being around other kids my age.  when I catch a snake I tell it satan had to worry about being you first.  I hear almost nothing because I want the voice to be perfect.  it will say I had, quite by accident, become evil or it will say finish your bathwater.

while being whipped
by the woman
who taught him
to mark
only
the people
he could hurt
a person
with, the boy

recreates himself
as one
giving birth
to a unicorn
beside
that horse
oblivion
or family
of horses
eating

from the straw
the stork
became

we recorded, badly, birdsong.

we lit sparingly.

we scissored
cloth
for puppet
rain.

we asked
was having
a boy
the trap
we’d set
for the wonder
he’d come
without?

as always, we ate
from a basket.

name the baby
and then
name
what it has.

an optimistic father
who calls
its insomnia

a god
with a god

complex.

I’d put something
in my mouth
and my nose
would bleed
and mom
would press
my ribs
and know
like that
the name
of the boy
buried
a horseshoe

-

return is a drug

hunger
a choice

-

and the lord said one of these animals is a writing machine
and the lord

he turned
the woman’s
shadow
into a garbage
bag

and the man’s
into water

-

sister dragged onto some dance floor
a scarecrow

-

pregnant / is what you get

if memory
remembers
to eat

can I miss
my body
with yours
our blood
the loneliest
bone

the fragile boy shepherds his pulse
among bigger bodies and into
the bruise and into the bruise’s
unkissable bone, that grey
area where holstered
his invisible gun dispenses
with metaphor and metaphors from
a pep rally
held in theory
in a stranger’s garage
where his brother’s
accidental birth
expired in his brother
who himself
was part bruise
part cream
added to the bruise
by a father whose lightning
stormed
from the hip of god
during a dream
had by a full
gallon of milk
mother held steady
for hours, back to back,
above the form
of it unstirred

a mother, a red permanent marker without a top, and a light Ohio rain.  a patient’s outside Monday allotment.  Tuesday we’ll try to find a vein.  proof of actual motherhood.  we are not far from doing this.  the time it takes to find a sturdy rocking chair in a recently dusted room.  the time it takes to sit there, pull an arm hair from the weak **** of one’s inner ant.  as it is, utter as you were, madness.

my pupils conserve blood for the dotting of your thighs.  the stages of grief omit grief.

he built a church
from the nothing
around it.

-

not all
have a disabled child
to write about.

-

he built a church
from the nothing
around it.

[a spider, worried]

this cloud from a father’s mouth
before it is ruined
by some kid
who’s learned
recently

her shapes
and not

to smoke

~

[levitations]

mom is trying to iron a spacesuit

car horns
they foil
hypnosis

~

[father with his stomach missing]

a fishhook left in a dream

a peeping
tom’s
basilisk

~

[lightning storms]

in a wedding dress
worn once
and haunted
by paper cuts

going
at her dolls
with a fork

the voided twin
created for duplication
trying to eat alone

our food
tastes
the same

its touching
backstory

still intact

be suddenness
my only possession-

heart arrested
and pulse
orphan

the boy tugs your arm in public.  his panic so local his gut could be yours.  verbatim you confront the misquote children from abusive studio apartments inherit warehouse jobs from problem immigrants. a bruise of ***** darkens the front of your jeans.

from the boy

(on the soon to be
exact
date
our poverty
matures)

this ballpark
statement:

I did not ask to be born.

     he wants the names
of those
I’ve told.

the parents
have each
a flyswatter.

they are very worried
about their angel, about their boy
with flu-like symptoms.

in two locations
my son
is unknown
is achieving
a boredom
his disease
can’t reach.

my father is speechless
after
he is left.  I write
about my mother
who is not pain
held
to the candle
of its possibility.  

the timeline is rhetorical, is a deposit
of sleep
disguised as longing
in the heads
of single minded
repeat
abusers.

my son floats for the first time lame,
it is uplifting, a kind of sloganeering
to keep
hate
local.

I want to weigh it, what is used
by the typist
to see
loneliness
from above.

I want it to be the star
your sister needs
when her eyes
claim her hearing
and hear

for example
chicken scratches
medications
disown.

boy
in a loose
diaper

standing
on a cement
block

we will have to attend
one of the weaker
dogfights
with

this baby, we will

have to slick
the baby
back

with blood, then maybe

it will slip
into the hidden
state
of those
surviving

on the recognition
you deserve
as a father
a swimmer

wants

I prayed for the wheelchair and then for the person in it.  I prayed for the water above which Jesus raced.  I knew full well that prayer was a starter’s gun.  that drowning was the silent education my grandfather on my mother’s side could afford and that his son frequented the left hemisphere of the brain by aligning himself with the right.  worse than prayer?  its dream of a retroactive birth defect.

it’s a bit early
to be
reincarnated

son, this illness

it takes
our death

her arms
gone thin-

her gait
these two
dark fish
chaperone
recalls me
to the delirium
of a prison

yard

cat-

her stomach
though
bulges
     is an upturned
bowl
of milk-

     it
that would
normally
disappear
before
my eyes

disappears
     after

drops, the man, his book.  it has no end.  but what can be said to men such as he,
not open to the closed terrors of want?  I've doors to lock.  the head librarian
may never return.  presently, sir, I've a candle to light

squired as I am to the dark aisle of sighs.  
the girl, there, on her belly
pretending to read
the intricate press
of your thumb
on her heel-

I don't suppose you'll find her shoes.

want told

you swift
you lovely (you)
were book

    want see
gunwoman
mid-stride
stopped

by man invisible
     man with
tape measure

     want god
flimsy and sudden
to collapse
but first
to press

     illustration
of button

want art
upstaged
by upset

toys

based solely on the original man in room, the man certainly seems to be charting the brain function of the child bride.  you’ll remember, his dementia opened to great controversy but as he predicted has since remained the perception of dementia.  what you might not recall is that the room is the very same room we hid while using.  both men were students then.  heavily armed.  attractive.  I still give the third world a vibrant thought.

I told everyone at school that my parents were together when they died and everyone at work that my children were not.  I chewed my sister’s food because she feared the quiet.  ate in two languages.  I wanted my brother’s singing voice.  his newborn to be shaped in the shadow of a pipe that went from cocoon to cornstalk.  the sound of god hitting on a ghost.

I change daily the size of the bird that will carry me to heaven.  I don’t know why my kids dash out of public restrooms giggling at having pressed every hand dryer.  I don’t know how they recognize you from your tv show.  you wouldn’t believe the business a broken metal detector attracts.  my gift is not lonely but it is mine.  when I dream the tornado I dream what is in it is undisturbed.  man in a chair reading a book.  in a tornado.  it is hard for me to exclaim.  I saw a dictionary drop and miss by a mile a baby’s head because the baby’s head was elsewhere.  it is like I am again addicted to those double A batteries that as a boy I’d **** on while outside uncle was kicking that tiny dune buggy at a cat most likely as perfect as any cat we’d come by.  I say perfect because it was there and gone.  I used to be fat.  it felt true.  and then I had a fat friend and I went and told him no bird would be able to take him anywhere.  you have a wife you have someone to have your child.  the success sorrow has brought me is perhaps underground.

terrified
of baby
chatter

attack dogs
are asked
to understand

english.

a candle burns
for a father’s
restraint.

on tv
the gentle
******’s

sense
of taste.

father bumps around the house.

-

at night, the night is naked.

-

before one can say
decorate
the interior

she powers on
the television.

-

if twice,

pinpoint poverty’s illness

and

aim a pop-gun.

-

mealtimes
I cough
and the pups
congregate.

-

our bloodied hero’s
shoes

burst.

-

if I am not with shovel
I am had
by a vision.