(various, 2013)

 

~Adonai~

as if asked to bathe an angel
father drops mother
from an open
first floor
window.

with little effort
my brothers move a trampoline
over her body.

I talk over
with two actors
in prison garb
how to shoot the scene
having only
one phone and one
pane of glass.

all were rich
father included
when the window was closed
and he was on fire.

~mall nuns~

a chicken with its head cut off
takes part in a melodrama
fit for a swan

–

both halves of my daughter
live thinking they are survived
by the other

–

mall nuns.

just nuns
taking a shortcut.

–

my daughter uses a pencil
when pretending
to smoke.

nesting failure

makes her sad.

–

I spend my days seeing things.

as if
youth is a museum

–

poverty isn’t

~virtuoso~

mommy I am stones. I am in the blacktop river. my veins have been used to unpiss cows. like my father after me I don’t want you to be my mother but you are. the men catch me with the fish they’ve eaten. they slap at me beneath a robe to make the robe move. I recognize my photo shopped savior as airbrushed. I blind whole neighborhoods with snowplow models of their choosing. if you receive this it means there is much more you haven’t. there are ashtrays no one makes anymore and tumors we don’t call phone-shaped. I am beautiful in the baby you sing to.

~cinema~

when as a father
one arrives early

one is lonesome

and given
by no one
the task

of remembering
the empty lot
roped off

and daughter
needing both hands
for the rock

~podium~

a toy tugboat
in an unfilled
baby pool

a dead spider
beneath it

I could talk nightly
on these-

my dreams would look for missing children
my dreams would turn to salt

~proximal~

this is the holding father
bent from the weight
of his child

ear to eardrop

a hospital tree in aftermath
hunched to the loss
of discovery

this is day 39 of 40
observations

each day I have so many
children to name

differently

I don’t remember the first time you were here

anymore I am blessed
to see your toes

hear a storm
when the storm
is distant