i.
one ground to another runs itself rock and rock in the unclosed pebbles of dirt open to aching at the wire your father fixes for free in the canceled warning of crow made gauze for blacktops poured not wholly over a woman-
she a belt buckle drunk pocked full the called back joy of a pop gun.
ii.
over glass I go with my milk bottle feet to church after church past mirrors sick and doctored.
iii.
needs hisself a dog he does the speechless boy drawn mother to his own mute breast -
so he clicks the roach of his tongue
makes a hole with the hole in his sock
makes tunnel sounds.
iv.
my aunt’s ear like a deformed thumb.
my aunt dreaming she says for two.
my aunt changing her mind, her mind
a mid-bread knife.
v.
soldiers able to turn in the throat a chicken bone straight.
vi.
for muscles: jaw down nightly the door of a stove,
jaw it up,
and salute.
vii.
tiny cups cured with sugar cubes and stilled with steam taken
from a skinned
train-born
pig, a train
of blackest
fur.
viii.
about ladders and war, about the devil-
a man stands on his hands in three feet of water. about god-
marco. marco.
ix.
the blue dolls and the gray dolls and the care with which the chosen choose cloth and after
all of it
some meat colored cloth.
x.
water knows your lips, and mine; takes our mouths
on faith.
xi.
*top teeth on the skin of an apple. top teeth mine. a test of joy, joy’s age. mama stepping on a scale holding my brother. mama putting him down, cocking her head, picking him up. asking for a towel. asking nicely be a good brother. the towel, hot from bread, sick with ants. heavy my mouth with sorry sorry. my slapped mouth, my loved love. mama’s hands back from hell. dish soap mama hands
uncut by the hair long had by my head.