kingsoftrain

VIOLENCES BEFORE BED

designed our brother designed a bathtub that couldn’t hold itself in any position long enough to keep god’s gaze in the injured overlap of stillness as paroled by a creator stuck in a shape-addicted form

designed our sister designed her sister as a crying joke inside of a third sister whose hearing loss created the moon

designed the moon designed an egg to break the ribs of the moon


VIOLENCES BEFORE TOUCH

designed I designed a thumb and with it started the scarecrow’s collapsed church of celibacy

designed my doglike creature designed for a deer a memory using only those sounds taught to god by cars driven at night by blow-up dolls mourning the pink life of mimes 

designed we designed a drunkenness that could breathe for a hole and the hole filled us with crickets and teeth

designed the cricket designed a classic hummingbird too stunned by the non-miracle of beast to leave the pecked eye of christ for the prayer of stillness darkened by a specifically timeworn crow done with being three times the size of god

designed god designed the same creatures as god

I had my honeyed life

designed my weakest son designed, ah

designed my passing designed passage through tapeworm’s nightmare of permanent stars

designed this poem designed the idea that a cricket could leave something in the future and get it back

tattoo
a wasp
its father


VIOLENCES BEFORE DREAMLIFE

designed a seasick photo designed a darkroom to keep the empty trap from dreaming of god’s unsurprised stomach

designed we designed a terrified mirror to sleep with the angel who imagined our seeing

designed your mother’s mouth designed a grape all could eat from memory


VIOLENCES BEFORE SWEETNESS

designed lightning designed a pair of scissors from something sleeping in the thigh sobbing on the right side of god

designed sound designed a voice for god as a way for animals to tell jokes 

unburn
the angels

it’s my year to add a brother

designed these fuckers designed

designed a machine designed a map to cover with cornfields the umbilical cord koans of data abandonment 

designed sleep designed restraint blue

designed blue

designed my brothers designed they are white

designed skin designed pressing on prayer with the oyster bruise of a fingernail starved in a mirror by the invisible disciples of nakedness

designed death death I did this for


VIOLENCES BEFORE CREATURE

designed your phone designed for mine a thumb as the secret god of a hairbrush teaching blood to crawl

designed eating designed eating the bee stings in our smuggled bread

designed the injured designed the dead


VIOLENCES BEFORE ASTONISHMENT

designed image designed a look for the expressionless to use in their broadcast of our expired witness

designed passage designed nothing moving in doom’s souvenir deer

death
isn’t moving

a ghost is an angel that remembers killing god


VIOLENCES BEFORE MEN

designed the afterlife designed the afterlife of missing children 

designed the dream designed its biological dream


VIOLENCES BEFORE EGGSHELL

designed the tornado designed a still child’s stomach for the painter of tornadoes

designed the healthy designed a tongue scraping by on nudes reading from god’s fingertips

designed the sick designed the sick getting sick outside

designed vigil designed a prayer-chain drinking game

designed the baby designed a baby okay with dying

designed intimacy designed a son speaking near his father’s mouth

designed a fingernail designed a method of tracing a haircut inside of a circle the moon met online

write to your mother and live

a doll thrown into a cornfield, if it comes back, you can't wear clothes for a week, poems mention twins so so often, a stick figure starves because it doesn't know what it eats, most of these need my childhood, which isn't fair, which is very fucking fair, it all got covered up, those babies, those babies killing angels, I prayed to a paper microscope, describe the baby, they couldn't, a spot on my back burned so patiently that a star faked its death, I was as warm as a toy, god got those names from a bomb, the baby to the last thing you saw

Death learns one language then praises my dumb song. I miss your mom. My whales are not real. Music gets lost all the time. It’s my farness that’s gone.

I am as lonely
as a clue
as a kitten
coughing 
near a suicide 
note

Our son’s name is mispronounced
by god

We shorten
everything

Death weighs
itself
in an app

genitalia 16

A boneless deer in the dream resistant stomach of an angel

The mouth
model
for the loneliest
mouth
award

The single-use hand of god the boy

Shape’s collection of entry
forms

I am looking
in this photo
for the grave
of my eye

Barren is the doll of my drinking

A star
learns
the names
of flowers
In pen I write

youngly
on my sneakers
dialogues
for my abusers

Mousetrap, megachurch

Babies hear themselves born

genitalia 15

A cricket listening for god

The longing
of the ocean
to lie
down

The plain search history of our saddest child

Father’s 
job
younger
younger

God the next
cricket

time
can't stop
a movie
I pressed 
my body
for answers
no
for no 
reason

I sometimes touch a very blue nowhere
Not with myself
Mom