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~
from The Blood You Don’t See Is Fake - Sept 2013, 211 pages, 10.00
the recidivist
I can overhear myself relating to an older brother the eerie feeling I had when jogging past an abandoned shoe factory. I am more nervous than I think I am and can sense brother’s multilayered disappointment in all things prime. it’s my stutter surprises me the most. as if it knows, beforehand, things will never be the same. once a coward, once is enough. born in a place that feared me.
within hail
the flashlight works if you shake it. this tree is the tree you should use. every other home is broken. every other window has in it my house arrested father. the dog run off, the dog come back. back with a beauty I will bed to babysit my brother. the crow is empty. a plaything, a part of the show. crow can be blindfold, camera. can censor among other things an exposed breast. the fence wasn’t here when we got here so it’s not here now. an uncle says there is a dog only he can hear. will say anything to get laid. in all fairness I’ve failed more than once to insert myself into the loneliness of my person.
a country
i.
I approach the dream as if I'm asleep
the answers written on my hand
ii.
I stick out my tongue
at the mid
born
baby
iii.
I raise awareness by praying
you go through
my exact
hell
iv.
I see myself as my son
writing to his father
about deformities
v.
in a crowd of soldiers
my daughter's head
bobs up and down
as if passed around
on a stick
vi.
it takes an army to imagine
only one thing
assistance
from the boy
(on the soon to be
exact
date
our poverty
matures)
this ballpark
statement:
I did not ask to be born.
he wants the names
of those
I’ve told.
~
from father, footrace, fistfight - June 2014, 177 pages, 10.00
the gentle detail
in the time it took
his daughter
to soap
her brother’s
cradle cap
the man
was able
to lose
an entire hand.
every now
and now
he corrects me
with a puppet.
there is no place
where nothing should be.
lift
my mother steps on a wooden block
with both feet.
stepping off,
she announces
she is going
on a diet.
my father covers his ears
and gets shaving cream
on them.
he turns me in his hands
like a dish towel
then drops me
at the base of the tree.
I transport
god’s blood
on three
disposable
razors
to my neighbor
who
on a high shelf
has a microscope.
deep still
ghost of snake.
an adoration
of atypical
young mother
fear.
mouse needs a toothache.
footwork
heads north.
1998-2014
ideas
are the sickness
health
provides.
thoughts
are two sons
for a jesus
whose fathers
one heavenly, one earthly
never had
to touch
a woman.
the pain is not tremendous.
lo it has kept me
from hurting
my kids.
~
from The Women You Take From Your Brother - Aug 2014, 351 pages, 18.00
joy and joy alone
I broke the boy on my knee because I needed a switch. we ran around an empty crib. I let him catch a breath and he let me kneel. we tiptoed in a manner of mocking past private make-up to which his mother had been softly applied. he drank tea from an eggshell and I declined. I swatted him to let him know I was dying. his bent sister fell asleep and the boy was kind enough to believe her hair was a nightgown. I swatted him again to let him know I would live. the tea was gone. the rest is sadness.
being
a man my mother knows
only in passing
is reading a library book
in the dugout
of his dead
child’s
home
field
while his wife
rounds the bases
pushing
a stray dog
in a grocery cart.
at the dinner table
father says
we’re fasting
in a world
of spirits.
~
from Misreckon - Dec 2014, 115 pages, 9.00
clear heads
while smoking a cigar in the shadow of a nervous minotaur, my father wrote the book on moral isolation. in it, he predicted there would be a television show about hoarders and that it would turn god into a sign from god. my mother read the book cover to cover during her fourth and fastest delivery. if there were edits, she kept them to herself and put his name beside hers on seasonally produced slim volumes of absolute shyness.
untitled (ii)
afraid of my sons, I was born scared. to my friend of few words I say
a few
words
on how a newborn looks like an undiscovered
fish
fresh
from ghosting
the underfunded
aquariums
of rapes
that occur. at some point
I’ll tell my daughter
we’ve met. my father
when he comes
comes
from another
dimension
to bear hug
our dinner guest
who’s arrived
in a mirror.
mother puts a gun to her foot.
end psalm
god had an earache and I heard thunder. I learned to shrink into the smallness of my brain. I associated money with my father’s funny bone. my mother with the dual church of hide and seek. I went on to have a son with special needs. he cried once. cried milk.
~
from Eating the Animal Back to Life - July 2015, 316 pages, 10.00
off night
when what we thought
had entered
our father
left
we used him
as an alarm
god is coming
and mom
is vacuuming
stones
neglect
it didn’t take long for the frog to become real to those around me. some would bring it back and pat me on the head and some would laugh when I told them it’d never tried to hop away before. some would say it was the frog that was depressed and some would pray for the frog I was lucky to have. when it began to speak, I told myself that’s just how frogs talk. god came to me sooner than most. mom joked that he must’ve known I had a frog to get back to. my sister maintains to this day she had no intention of eating the frog as she was only trying to impress the snake her eyes were made for. by the time I woke her up, her hunger had ballooned and she leapt at me the odd leap of grief.
contact high
it gets so you can’t throw a rock without having a baby. not all of us talk this way but you have to hand something to the ones that do. I’ve seen voodoo dolls with more personality. had my mother’s god been my father’s, I would’ve gone blind from staring at my birth.
themes for country
I am at the truck
getting ice cream
for the overly
nostalgic
girl
who refused
to cut through
the cemetery
~
from Drone & Chickenhouse - Oct 2015, 84 pages, 6.00
chaos
brother drinks water enough to shock the devil. on the inside, he’s all doll. I shake him for show might our sisters travel in pairs. I used to talk but had to close my mouth when the soft spot on his head kept my mother from her toes. it’s the second stone that really lands.
deep scene
speech itself is a failed translation
dreaming is a farm
a mother
makes it as far
as mailbox
bear
to fish
there’s water
in the water
is, today’s mousetrap
tomorrow’s
shoe
language
word gets around
the schoolyard
pretty quick
that my father
drove his body
off a cliff
so god
would have a nail
hot enough
to touch.
I have a tooth
can make it
snow.
