you turn away*
the way the earth turns so the sun can't fix it's heated stare
my look merely rolls off, unabsorbed
why do you rotate?
my gaze is not meant to dry your oceans
or burn your forests
I simply wish to light your mornings
illuminate your mountains
and warm your valleys

Early morning darkness
Pierced by tree lights
Douglas the Fir and I
Share a quiet space in time

Upon Douglas have hung
So many beautiful bobbles
Representing hopes and dreams
Shimmering moments of a past

Until, dried up, water unabsorbed
Douglas the Fir topples
Ornaments and lights shattered
Broken glass across the floor

Few treasures remain, stored away
Is it worth the effort?
Shopping for new bobbles or tree
Just knowing it too will die...

Yet, on lives a Christmas dream
One filled with joy, happiness, love
Where is Fraser the Fir?
Who's lights illuminate the morning.

my hairline sweat and tears
mist from a shoreline,
paint down my wrinkles like waves cresting
a rocky beach,
my colors so dissolved, all my fleshy canvases
exposed to too much sun, my piercings all droopy,
teeth falling out. I need a hair cut a good dentist and Dr.
Phil. Or just strip down to my loincloth
go back to Rochester,
run with  wildness, as I did then
through brush and bathed in purple
abandonement, virile unabsorbed
lazing under the mulberry brush
the willows swaying down to touch my unscarred youngness,
with hope with hunger, then.

your eyes absorb the words my mouth emits like they absorb the light from the stars in my night sky
ice resides in the hollows of your bones and once i pull your loose threads,
you scream all the things you never spoke
you screamed for hours
you still do
but your scream is quiet now
quiet,
yet still audible
i hear it while i'm sitting in this stupid psych's office,
wondering if the flickering lamp to my left is mocking my emotions that never change
there's no on,
no off

but it's the silence
don't you get it?
you were silent
you spoke all your words the night you stood at the edge of that ******* cliff and let the breeze carry you away with those words
im sitting in this office because your silence won't leave my ******* head
it's so still inside, there's a void
i'm vacant
the Prozac diffuses into an empty bloodstream
now the hollows of my bones are on fire
my night sky is filled with your unabsorbed light

[response musics (i)]

what nostalgia is to angel, eyesore is to animal

most mothers
hate
being filmed

there is the way I hold my son
& there is
the way I hold my son
while running
in place

tornado means
I am touched
in a house
with no
basement

wherever it is your father goes
the postcards
there
are small

oh to see jesus
walk at all

~

[response musics (ii)]

I thought girlhood the boyhood of grief

childcare, handprints, the failed hearts
of octopi

toy / on a stair / left there / by doll

god (memory)
making its way
through the useless
infant

myself
an impressionist

(because all

my mothers
faint

~

[a prayer for the tall mother whose cigarettes void brevity]

piano that disappeared
milk
that didn’t…

feather in the stomach
of my angel’s ghost

~

[cleaning the body small and boy]

the brain a ****
in the remoteness of god

~

[removal musics (ix)]

what a quick study
addiction is

this longing
my father’s

(her childhood a pinning of morose insects)

no horse but maybe
one
that pillows
a tree’s
broken
hip-

this poem, lonely expert
in a town of goats

~

[guest musics]

sand in her ear
she goes
as a seashell
her small
joke
a way
of living
on land
with the ghost
of her unbathed
child
her mother
calling clothesline
the scarecrow’s
scarecrow

~

[how to make a body]

sleep
until you feel
it passing
the slow
mattress
drowsy
and afloat
designed
for god

throw anything
you can find

stick, stone, nest, honeycomb

bird
the weight
of wasp

- name
what lands
with a friend
you can touch

~

[being alone went by so fast]

we have in my city a museum just like this. I, too, am private and have lost an unabsorbed child. I am,

inventory, very motherly.

this one-man radio show about a father looking for his mouth. this tornado.

my first owl was a bee-loving tick. my first milk
was jigsaw

milk. being alone went by so fast.

~

[musics, other]

mother’s
farsick
palm, father’s

pack
of disappearing
nails-

our goldfish
insomnia

~

[toying with object permanence in kidnapper’s invisible world]

how
to unfossil
the mourned
boy
kissed
we believe
on the wrist
by
(we don’t)
the last
to experience
déjà vu

~

[lawn musics]

books on arson, grammar, vandalism…

god, multiple owners.

a typewriter
touched by father
at night.

the electric chair my brother imagined
& the hair
my sister...

adam (who’s never known the age of eve