I have all the words that have gone missing to say that I am thankful for being in the August 2021 run of Poem-A-Day at poets.org as guest edited by Kazim Ali
Read the poem here
about the poem:
“I can't speak for all fathers, but my own fathering is littered with necessary and fake finalities. As such, I wrote this poem by hand on a small piece of paper while worrying about the long and short lives of my children. In the spacing of the poem, I tried to honor the little room I'd given myself for its projected concerns.”
genitalia 3
A man can be seen sitting on the roof of his mother’s house. He has a gun, or a stick, and some say they can hear a baby crying. I am the man’s most quiet brother. A cop talks to my brother from below and is pointing at my brother’s dog and is telling my brother that we are all going to count to three and the dog will die. My brother screams it isn’t his dog. The dog looks hurt. I think by this.
genitalia 2
In the dream
they shove an egg
down my pants
and start
punching
Later,
I keep my jeans on
Swim
to the lake’s
middle
genitalia 1
In the garden
the tree
of hair
Later,
god up
at night
There’s nothing to do
in this unicorn
On the jesus
of our headache
That mouth
They gave my insides to the animal that had smelled me in heaven. They are trying to grow the loneliest woman.
A ventriloquist falls silent in a film that shows hell. There are places in heaven that are too close to god.
Creation became small enough to hold us. I won’t be putting my feet on the earth and that’s gonna have to be ok. I have been told more than once about my sentences. My deep-in-thought newborns. About the rape fantasy cutoff I’d have made had I not in second grade pissed on that mat in music class. God having to hear god, imagine. I wanted to kill myself and tell someone. Language started with a deer. In the deer that heard it. Snow remembers being snow, but you have to be there. The internet stops to pray in a prayer.
Once you eat the eye of god
the eating
and the eye
last forever. Existence
has no mechanism
to recognize
death. We need
animals. Holy
grief sale
we need
animals.
Image mourns too early
the mirage
that haunts
sobriety. This drone
that drone
There was room
at the inn
In rabbit astronomy, a hole touches a hole. I want you to imagine the loneliness of being a thing that others its own cure. Death loves the disabled. I am still hurt by the art you don't like. My brothers have started running. Dearest brothers I was hit at a different clip by those who would say a prayer over weapons buried in the garden. I don't think anyone should receive an award for writing prose. School shootings, that's why. Also psalms. Also haiku. Also the age nostalgia reaches in America and the age it doesn't in Israel. Death loves the disabled. Did I say that already? God sure misses being notified of the yearning we've created.

