Sep 2015
from self-published collection The Blood You Don’t See Is Fake (poems, Sept 2013)
available on Lulu
auteurs
I am in your house
being you
when the boy
enters my house
with a sack of ash
to tell my wife
he has come
to avoid
a whole
personality
–
my wife is one to believe
she was carried
by child
–
listen,
a baby’s cry is the oral future of what touches the brain
individuation
in a previous imagination the boy was able to overcome his attention span. it was there he pummeled his pregnancy. I wanted a clearer image but was told to take the boy as is or not at all. I could feel his sister trapped in the same horror she was later revealed to be outside of. up until then, I was sad her whole life.
stressful events
a father and son argue outside a small town barbershop in windless ten degree weather. inside the shop, which is closed, the barber’s wife is clipping away at a wig. nearby, and quite by accident, an invisible man uncovers a fainting spell before which some will disrobe. namely, women declaring that the eye is always naked. who are these women?, ask my teeth, which are snow.
lacuna
Ohio 1976 I was given a word. a helluva word. I went unborn. a word my mother swallowed. a troublesome word. nervosa sans pretext. my father slept until his sleep became self aware. he paced. then gave me his word. stood over me.
Ohio 2013 you ***** on my shadow in an abandoned building outside of which a pregnant woman bikes herself into a garage door and bloodies her nose between sound and horn.
recovery
I fry a single egg
in a pan.
the sound places me
in one of my mother’s
teeth
as it dissolves.
I bring mother
the egg, and she believes
I am the same son
who brought her an egg
yesterday.
she eats the egg
over and over.
her attempted suicide
is not something
I know of. she keeps it to herself
in the person she was.
youth
a jailer
talking through bars
to a ventriloquist.
youth / spent trying to yank a doll
by the ear.
the wave
we let the phone ring out because it keeps the babies quiet. we have this dance we do to straighten side leaning semi-trailer trucks. the sports we play require that one’s sickness occur only when it’s run through the others. we limp beside any creature that limps. the great romance of a complete thought is something our parents plan to leave each other. our father is two mathematicians who argue. our mother says her feet feel as if they’re still in prison for what she’ll take to her grave. our guesses mean little because they are facts. at school we are voted on and kissable. if you see us coming, *** is a small unplugged television on top of a small casket. details belong to god.
stray dog leaping
the poor are beaten
from the future
they get off work
the day is hot
it’s ungodly
as ungodly as placing a single chair in a garage
the poor get home
the chair remains in the present
the dog
can’t afford to be here
appears mid-scene
in the backyard
the poor imagine
an electric fence
scrounge together
the amount they would pay
to fix it
& smile as they would smile
at the mindless sap
whose job it would be
whose chair it is
orb
the back of my mother’s head was spotted in an Ohio movie theater by a boy whose eyes were covered or maybe closed. I received word secondhand from the boy’s stepfather whose own recollection was marred by the violence he shied from to reach me. in fact, the theater was even possibly a drive-in where the boy remains in the bathroom standing on the toilet to avoid the knowledge he is no longer deaf. like most information regarding my mother, it hasn’t aged well. she’ll set the table at noon for two and drink her coffee and I’ll join her convinced no child dies from its hair being pulled. more secret than my son is his ability to withstand miracles.
earthling
not there when your mother
cries into a poison soaked towel
to a childish god
while kneeling
before the remnant heat
of an open dryer.
not there when your father
by the sound of it
breaks your arm
pressing it into
the shrunken right sleeve
of a shirt that should fit.
not there when your brother
spooked by a deer…
not there when my body
stops the procession
that one might be held in its image.
virtuoso
mommy I am stones. I am in the blacktop river. my veins have been used to unpiss cows. like my father after me I don’t want you to be my mother but you are. the men catch me with the fish they’ve eaten. they slap at me beneath a robe to make the robe move. I recognize my photo shopped savior as airbrushed. I blind whole neighborhoods with snowplow models of their choosing. if you receive this it means there is much more you haven’t. there are ashtrays no one makes anymore and tumors we don’t call phone-shaped. I am beautiful in the baby you sing to.
notes on the saints
younger times, I’d lose some of my hair when bathing the sick. now older, I am not a private person. I foresee helping father with his winter gloves and him thinking I’ve returned his hands. if sick, one shouldn’t be grateful for the inclusion. there’s a **** son in all of us.
available on Lulu
auteurs
I am in your house
being you
when the boy
enters my house
with a sack of ash
to tell my wife
he has come
to avoid
a whole
personality
–
my wife is one to believe
she was carried
by child
–
listen,
a baby’s cry is the oral future of what touches the brain
individuation
in a previous imagination the boy was able to overcome his attention span. it was there he pummeled his pregnancy. I wanted a clearer image but was told to take the boy as is or not at all. I could feel his sister trapped in the same horror she was later revealed to be outside of. up until then, I was sad her whole life.
stressful events
a father and son argue outside a small town barbershop in windless ten degree weather. inside the shop, which is closed, the barber’s wife is clipping away at a wig. nearby, and quite by accident, an invisible man uncovers a fainting spell before which some will disrobe. namely, women declaring that the eye is always naked. who are these women?, ask my teeth, which are snow.
lacuna
Ohio 1976 I was given a word. a helluva word. I went unborn. a word my mother swallowed. a troublesome word. nervosa sans pretext. my father slept until his sleep became self aware. he paced. then gave me his word. stood over me.
Ohio 2013 you ***** on my shadow in an abandoned building outside of which a pregnant woman bikes herself into a garage door and bloodies her nose between sound and horn.
recovery
I fry a single egg
in a pan.
the sound places me
in one of my mother’s
teeth
as it dissolves.
I bring mother
the egg, and she believes
I am the same son
who brought her an egg
yesterday.
she eats the egg
over and over.
her attempted suicide
is not something
I know of. she keeps it to herself
in the person she was.
youth
a jailer
talking through bars
to a ventriloquist.
youth / spent trying to yank a doll
by the ear.
the wave
we let the phone ring out because it keeps the babies quiet. we have this dance we do to straighten side leaning semi-trailer trucks. the sports we play require that one’s sickness occur only when it’s run through the others. we limp beside any creature that limps. the great romance of a complete thought is something our parents plan to leave each other. our father is two mathematicians who argue. our mother says her feet feel as if they’re still in prison for what she’ll take to her grave. our guesses mean little because they are facts. at school we are voted on and kissable. if you see us coming, *** is a small unplugged television on top of a small casket. details belong to god.
stray dog leaping
the poor are beaten
from the future
they get off work
the day is hot
it’s ungodly
as ungodly as placing a single chair in a garage
the poor get home
the chair remains in the present
the dog
can’t afford to be here
appears mid-scene
in the backyard
the poor imagine
an electric fence
scrounge together
the amount they would pay
to fix it
& smile as they would smile
at the mindless sap
whose job it would be
whose chair it is
orb
the back of my mother’s head was spotted in an Ohio movie theater by a boy whose eyes were covered or maybe closed. I received word secondhand from the boy’s stepfather whose own recollection was marred by the violence he shied from to reach me. in fact, the theater was even possibly a drive-in where the boy remains in the bathroom standing on the toilet to avoid the knowledge he is no longer deaf. like most information regarding my mother, it hasn’t aged well. she’ll set the table at noon for two and drink her coffee and I’ll join her convinced no child dies from its hair being pulled. more secret than my son is his ability to withstand miracles.
earthling
not there when your mother
cries into a poison soaked towel
to a childish god
while kneeling
before the remnant heat
of an open dryer.
not there when your father
by the sound of it
breaks your arm
pressing it into
the shrunken right sleeve
of a shirt that should fit.
not there when your brother
spooked by a deer…
not there when my body
stops the procession
that one might be held in its image.
virtuoso
mommy I am stones. I am in the blacktop river. my veins have been used to unpiss cows. like my father after me I don’t want you to be my mother but you are. the men catch me with the fish they’ve eaten. they slap at me beneath a robe to make the robe move. I recognize my photo shopped savior as airbrushed. I blind whole neighborhoods with snowplow models of their choosing. if you receive this it means there is much more you haven’t. there are ashtrays no one makes anymore and tumors we don’t call phone-shaped. I am beautiful in the baby you sing to.
notes on the saints
younger times, I’d lose some of my hair when bathing the sick. now older, I am not a private person. I foresee helping father with his winter gloves and him thinking I’ve returned his hands. if sick, one shouldn’t be grateful for the inclusion. there’s a **** son in all of us.
