(rejections)

 

~ neighborhood wine

it’s the same in every model. the cat is first, then the dog, then the baby the cat eats in a dream. while I can’t speak for his cough, I can say my son doesn’t belong to god. my fear of water snakes, though vaguely tied to my father’s shaved belly, began with a bike that was given to my brother with no one on it.

~ appetence

I stab my father with a carrot so I can say he lives to the pacifist who broke the television we were called to witness. I run after my children because they think they are chasing nothing down the street. god blows two bubbles that become the eyes of a crucified man. the last arm in the world will be a prosthetic arm made for the toddler who will die in the meat of the dying. your father has an apple in one hand and a tomato in the other. everyone is poor. everyone is responsible for how it is portrayed to the bun in the oven. the softness we reserve for women has gone to our teeth.

~ modicums

the child
saint
of separation
anxiety
eats

so little
that when
he
or she
chews
open

mouthed

a ghost
gets
a birthmark

~ silent work

naming
the stillborn
within hail
of the snake
loving
boy
who can psalm
a basketball

~ interpretive work

prayer
as the horn
the car
carries
into
a tornado. touch

as ventriloquy.

~ how to receive the crucifixion story

burn the scarecrow
your mother
translates for.

make your daughter
believe
that a virgin
is a nobody, that a somebody

does her own
stunts.

hire
grief’s interpreter
on a part-time
basis
to blow
your son
in your son’s
presence.

as a symbol of your absence

disappear.

~ themes for abandon

the father is a one-man show
of seasonal darkness.

the mother is clockwork.

the child is the child born
wearing
a tight
shirt.

the loaf of bread is the hot heart of nightfall.

the cut is a city
attracted
to a blood drive. the blood drive

is god’s treehouse.

~ lithic

I am too wrapped up in my own stomach
to visit the mother
who worships

mine

~ baptismal

while my mother
swims
in the lake
where my father
learned
to coexist
with his ability
to be
alone,

to which
my father
brought
the seashell
his father
coined
the ocean’s
bible,

I sleep
the sleep
of my hair
not the sleep
of its brush

~ bearings

I’m here for the music

–

you can keep
your baby
I’m here
for the swing

–

I write
on the days
my son
is sick

–

if heard

I overhear

there was more
to him
in the womb

–

no dream is strong enough to put a hospital
on the map

–

in heaven

the past
is the present
that left
for earth

~ buzzer therapy

dearest ear,
god is not my fault.

I can hear the worm’s message,
the anthill’s thunder.

revelation comes
once a week
to come out
of its coma. between us,

my rapist belongs to me.

~ resting place

insomnia
is the stone
I move
from the hand
that forgets it
to the hand
that remembers
nothing.

sleep’s
reactionary
phobia
of loss
comes to me
in a dream.

the distance from you to me
is still
god. to what

your sight
has touched
I appear
visible. as recalled,

my childhood
has very little
on the illness
it took
to process
yours.