Jun 2015
from self-published collection Abandonesque (December 2013)
available on Lulu.
abstract qualities
above me many characters frequent my father. they shake him firmly and I pretend their hands are crumbling into my mouth. I don’t know where I’ve lived but know I’ve been moved numerous times. in the movies that have been on seemingly since my birth there is one I miss. in it, a room service cart is toppled by two men going for a gun. moments later a shirtless woman rights the cart and the righting wakes me to how prone I am to having a body. when we are alone, father reads by flashlight underneath the somewhere of me. I wonder with my feet if his feet are cold. I tried early on to go to heaven but couldn’t convince a single language that I wasn’t already there. when a woman looks like my mother, I spy on hell.
dear infant
imagine
your decoy’s
memory
trades
a baby appears onstage in a kick drum. the more I think of time travel the more it can do. when I ask about the fresh blood you say I should see the ear muffs. you say they are behind the snowy tv screen we made into a blanket for a dying robot and stared at to avoid the sight of your father the walking anthill. my privates move in my sleep. my privates are outside the governance of worship. you can have me from the waist up. my ******* are alone. the devil shares a history with god. in Ohio I am not a girl chewing the corner of a baseball card.
expertise
doom is the second half of a week long hotel stay. I **** on a pile of white t-shirts, one of which is liberated by delirium’s child. eat snow, understanding.
eat it in your hermit’s realm.
forte
addiction did not transform into prose.
familiarity did not breed.
it was not cold, it was heartbreaking.
it was hearing
my blanket needs a blanket.
it was billed as frostbite
with a beautiful write-up
in the archive
of I cannot
move my eyes.
it was not my imagination.
the baby was a city.
it lost us.
talisman
I think it’s a tuning fork. I convince myself and speak to it. the boy with me says it looks like a ******-up cross. says imagine jesus got to heaven and was still part human just imagine. the boy would be ****** if he were him. next his mother is off her rocker and so on and soon the boy is muffled by where he’s hiding. I’m okay with it. I need some peace and scratching. that’s my father’s, peace and scratching. he’d set a shoebox with a live rat in it next to him whether he had one or not. gotta corner that thought. I look about, the boy has either shut up or died or is living quietly afar. I sit on three stacked tires and fear a moment for my ***. I brave what might still be a tuning fork. I poke with it the place I was male then caress. rain on the roof of my home makes the roof look like a lake. one magic possum after another gives me depth. I snap out. the boy is circling me, he’s been struck by lightning, is in fact still being struck. his hard-on looks to last.
forms
in the end, she was a pair of beautiful hands and he was mostly a heavy head. in the beginning, she fed him too eagerly and wore a short dress of one color. his own hands were hearing things and she’d put them on his ears. he was either an unknown writer or a bill collector. he scripted for her the last lovely times of the empress of bullish desperation. as a young fathoming she knew him constantly. I’ve ghosted for them since I can remember but am open to the possibility I haven’t. touch is not touch but is where it’s hidden.
the inspection
my son helps me open my fist.
he rolls up my sleeves.
Christ is still dead.
my mom doesn’t smoke.
abandonesque
what can god read to make him feel more human? then there’s this about how the nose and ears never stop growing. I can believe it because at desks even so calm some seem to be cowering. then you have an accepting friend and I have mine and they kiss in pockets of sadness sidestepped by tomboys who have their own issues like frogs. point wildly. it’s not a shame beauty ******-up. I look sometimes like a different baby.
always crow
the boy keeps quiet about his room. his toys gather for bully scenes. his toys even have a graveyard. when one goes missing, he believes in an angel. his mother hides her applause from his father like a tracking device. the three live together at different times in a pre-existing broken home with two chimneys. forest the boy thinks is the forgotten back of a forest creature. when in the room he is quiet about, the boy grooms each wall to be a window for one day and for when that one day comes. my girlfriend grieves in public to tell me how his mother and father were not long ago so lovely and so accused. he was the only boy who couldn’t see a crow without seeing through it. could be he’s the blood in her voicebox.
available on Lulu.
abstract qualities
above me many characters frequent my father. they shake him firmly and I pretend their hands are crumbling into my mouth. I don’t know where I’ve lived but know I’ve been moved numerous times. in the movies that have been on seemingly since my birth there is one I miss. in it, a room service cart is toppled by two men going for a gun. moments later a shirtless woman rights the cart and the righting wakes me to how prone I am to having a body. when we are alone, father reads by flashlight underneath the somewhere of me. I wonder with my feet if his feet are cold. I tried early on to go to heaven but couldn’t convince a single language that I wasn’t already there. when a woman looks like my mother, I spy on hell.
dear infant
imagine
your decoy’s
memory
trades
a baby appears onstage in a kick drum. the more I think of time travel the more it can do. when I ask about the fresh blood you say I should see the ear muffs. you say they are behind the snowy tv screen we made into a blanket for a dying robot and stared at to avoid the sight of your father the walking anthill. my privates move in my sleep. my privates are outside the governance of worship. you can have me from the waist up. my ******* are alone. the devil shares a history with god. in Ohio I am not a girl chewing the corner of a baseball card.
expertise
doom is the second half of a week long hotel stay. I **** on a pile of white t-shirts, one of which is liberated by delirium’s child. eat snow, understanding.
eat it in your hermit’s realm.
forte
addiction did not transform into prose.
familiarity did not breed.
it was not cold, it was heartbreaking.
it was hearing
my blanket needs a blanket.
it was billed as frostbite
with a beautiful write-up
in the archive
of I cannot
move my eyes.
it was not my imagination.
the baby was a city.
it lost us.
talisman
I think it’s a tuning fork. I convince myself and speak to it. the boy with me says it looks like a ******-up cross. says imagine jesus got to heaven and was still part human just imagine. the boy would be ****** if he were him. next his mother is off her rocker and so on and soon the boy is muffled by where he’s hiding. I’m okay with it. I need some peace and scratching. that’s my father’s, peace and scratching. he’d set a shoebox with a live rat in it next to him whether he had one or not. gotta corner that thought. I look about, the boy has either shut up or died or is living quietly afar. I sit on three stacked tires and fear a moment for my ***. I brave what might still be a tuning fork. I poke with it the place I was male then caress. rain on the roof of my home makes the roof look like a lake. one magic possum after another gives me depth. I snap out. the boy is circling me, he’s been struck by lightning, is in fact still being struck. his hard-on looks to last.
forms
in the end, she was a pair of beautiful hands and he was mostly a heavy head. in the beginning, she fed him too eagerly and wore a short dress of one color. his own hands were hearing things and she’d put them on his ears. he was either an unknown writer or a bill collector. he scripted for her the last lovely times of the empress of bullish desperation. as a young fathoming she knew him constantly. I’ve ghosted for them since I can remember but am open to the possibility I haven’t. touch is not touch but is where it’s hidden.
the inspection
my son helps me open my fist.
he rolls up my sleeves.
Christ is still dead.
my mom doesn’t smoke.
abandonesque
what can god read to make him feel more human? then there’s this about how the nose and ears never stop growing. I can believe it because at desks even so calm some seem to be cowering. then you have an accepting friend and I have mine and they kiss in pockets of sadness sidestepped by tomboys who have their own issues like frogs. point wildly. it’s not a shame beauty ******-up. I look sometimes like a different baby.
always crow
the boy keeps quiet about his room. his toys gather for bully scenes. his toys even have a graveyard. when one goes missing, he believes in an angel. his mother hides her applause from his father like a tracking device. the three live together at different times in a pre-existing broken home with two chimneys. forest the boy thinks is the forgotten back of a forest creature. when in the room he is quiet about, the boy grooms each wall to be a window for one day and for when that one day comes. my girlfriend grieves in public to tell me how his mother and father were not long ago so lovely and so accused. he was the only boy who couldn’t see a crow without seeing through it. could be he’s the blood in her voicebox.
