(ix)

at a therapy session
for those
unable
to dream
I am handcuffed
to my mother
whose imaginary
lover
has lice

a baby born with a wig
rattles on
about sleep

death’s eyepatch

(x)

on these bikes these boys are beautiful

/ passing men under spell of god, the order

maybe dissolved

of the bent
cigarette

/ I will not miss art

five-thousand fathers
to burn
a fish

but ease, but hunger

a girl putting all her pain in a turtle
or in anything
lifted
from the hood
of her sister’s
coat

/ a firecracker
read
by a bone

(xi)

what a ghost knows about giving birth
powers on
a mechanical bull

father says there is nothing
like it
in Ohio
this giving

god

to a jack-in-the-box

there is a word my mom makes
from a word
she can’t

/ orbituary

/ brings it all
home

(xii)

the human dream

god’s attempt at a short story

the animal
works

miracles

/ the elephant
in its ruin
takes up
for whale

yeah, it rains here
rains
glue

adult diapers
are fishhook
rare…

/ tell your sister
nothing happened
to mine

(xiii)

imagine how long god must’ve been left alone to be named after the first person whose name he said. how hungry the mother to swallow hair.  how bored her baby to remember.  how small the television that spitballed hell.  hidden the horse to keep its church.  black the water to transport fish.

(xiv)

the black eye
given
to the moth-catcher’s
most attractive
child…

what a woman predicts
becomes false

subtraction
the plus side
of trauma

her mother’s
babied
past