[in this life another is you]

father paints an abstract jesus.  my sister bites at the shoulder strap of her bra.  my brothers

to keep from crumbling
are sharing
bread.  

-

I draw a violinist.  a dog

at the neck of its owner.

-

in our imaginings
gutted baseballs

became

the skulls of small animals
through which
the wind

called heads.

-

in heaven’s garage
they’ve yet
to make
a horn
that works.

the kids have gone two or three years now without being raised.

the match
unlit
by your tooth
is paradise.    

-

a refrigerator rocks in a junkyard.

either the door has jammed, or she

is pregnant.

-

a cement wall
scraped
in passing
by one
with a stick
is the love
we have
for father

-

depression is a dog whistle.  I miss dinner sounding it out.

-

(when a scar of thunder / outs itself / I am blue)

or bluish

(like a sock in a blue
coat’s
pocket)

-

it is cruel to hang anything above a baby’s crib

-

I can only guess
I was happy
in the womb
with how
my mother
looked

-

the bunk
above mine
I call
deathbed

is

my brother’s-

he has
his own
way
of thinking

showerhead
is spotlight

-

here is a test:  circle
the parts
of a circle

(a sameness)

in the parrots
we care for…

our suicides
fight
for position

-

in the apple
air
of hem
and haw
a pacing
uncle
blank
as a broom
regards
the *******
half
of a doorknob

or

two men
carry a ladder
past a cemetery

one thought
between them

-

this nonfiction
not
what you’d
imagined

-

mother an artifact of paranoia

-

paper
scissors
milk

-

blacktop
pools
at the neck

of a crow.

half eaten
children
limp
home.

an umbrella.  a bra.  a harp.

a street we call satan.  

-

water, make your fist.  hold your breath
in a single
fish.

-

delirious
when the lights
went out
mother
would pull cocoons
from the oven    
tell us
to stop
kicking

-

it was a very strong soap
she’d use

a soap that squealed
against

the skin

her heart  
a hiccup’s
echo

her eyesight the sound of a drill

her eyes
two holes
in a turtle’s
shell

her eyes for seeing

the food in her mouth

-

the sobbing ventriloquist was my idea.  mother and father they were taking turns moving shampoo through my hair as I hummed.  doom was a color.  a mare kneeling on a bed of maroon straw.  miles off, an ambulance driver entered a silent film and tried to buy a garage door opener.    

-

children from abusive studio apartments inherit warehouse jobs from problem immigrants.  a bruise of ***** darkens the front of your jeans.  I am mugged in your dream and mugged in mine and mugged by a woman in both.  for now, this field.  my gestural father holding a broom for what he calls the welcome mat

of exodus.  in memory alone I am alone.

-

under crow
and flat
on my back
in the loft
of my uncle’s
barn
my shadow
is still
she
who upright
confessed
so loudly
that her heart
flew
into a quiet
sky
as she
collapsed

-

on television
the world’s smallest ghost town.  on a shadow

socks match

-

no longer graveyards, I tend what is everywhere resting.  I crawl like a toothache, long with her death.  the voices move from head to mouth.  

a squirrel on fire.  an act of god.  

I don’t think seeing such things is enough to put

vague
& crow
into one bed.  she is asleep

or fingered
by a man
with seven.      

-

in a country store
a barefoot girl
walks on her heels-

long stride and baby.

the store’s owner
happily shelves
popcorn, gauze

     the thought of his father
doing nothing.

-

beating my clothes
with me
in them
mother
irons
a man
from the moon  

(who giggles in us poorly)

for love

-

if my father admits in his bed that some mice are alive when he bends
to the earth
a cornstalk
and lets
fly,

I have to find the mouse
that means
other mice.  

-

wish I could dream away the bad mornings spent cheating on her sadness        

-

illness, assault.

presence
a blank
petition

-

in the end my mother was mostly an ocean dipped into by lightning.  

a mother whose hands were broken by recent events.  events that evoke transcription.

-

assault:

maid
loses cart
to stairwell

-

illness:

a birthmark, a scar, and a tattoo

eating under
a blanket

~

[hospital young]

years back I met god in some nowhere town before I was born to teach symbolism. I know what room I’m in by the tv show my mother’s watching. dear ghost, I hope you like the parrot. from what word did letter come. existence mourns non. grieve on sight.

~

[untitled]

fog overtakes toad
& boys
are born.

ghost yoga. crucifixion.

train is a tunnel
train’s never
seen.

two dead crows- I’m shoeless again.

~

[food (xiii)]

while pacing the hallway of a floor that elevators skip, an amateur eulogist pictures an error-prone barber in a bath of milk who gave as a gift a rocking horse with a bad stomach to a child healing a cobweb for a starless bear.

~

[untitled]

after seeing the girl I have a crush on sign my friend’s arm cast, I spend the weekend jumping out of a tree, trying to land on my left, in the backyard of the last person who knew to hide the head of god. I break nothing but the blood from my nose could fill a football. vandalism starts in the face. it’s dark. I treat my mouth like a scratch.

~

[notes for insect]

I will never know a ghost story

god does not