(ON, hope)

~ On mother, father, god, dog, pussy

what if the eyes in the back of my head

hallucinate

what if
the eyes in the back of my head

during surgery

during

a haircut

~

~ On foreclosure

the occasional declawed cat
past which
I make
like I
am rowing

(in wheelbarrow) (in wagon) otherwise,

noises beneath a bomb or bomb
threat

~

~ On the past

my life

four children
drinking water
from glasses placed on either side
of my sleep-

it is on these nights
when I am sick
that I become the sound of my ears
softening
my mind’s
thoughtless position
on time, that I am ably

here, ably slow

full view
of the aging

marksman

~

~ On phobia

as I refuse

(to enter
the ocean)

I’m pretty sure god has put my death in a bug

~

~ On the need for a watchlist

if one can talk of it, one is most likely not poor. we called you to life to give you a name. god became the man men wanted to be. god wore a dress he could see through. a short history of heaven made its way to hell to have its location shared. your mother developed a stutter. your fake cry took on a depth of meaning made us dip

(psalm
for satellite)

into your brother.

~

~ On paternity

as his mother has heard only yesterday how he was born to some nobody that everyone can describe, she instructs her barber to slide a lit cigarette behind her ear. as unimportant as the barber is, his pencil makes a subtle change in her dream of putting a cricket on the witness stand.

~

~ On my son having little to no vision

I am on count eight of ten-

ten, the future.

I call you raindrop,
your hiding place

water

–

staring contest-

the only child and the twin, then

the lonely
victor

~

~ On decompression

the zombie movie about buzzards. the hours that go undetected in the parents of forty-eight special needs children.

~

~ On lore

I have two dreams of running into the newly pregnant late bloomer. in the first and most recurrent, I am operating a remote control car I’ve lost while worrying about a brother’s closeness to a certain pilot. in the second, my mother is talking lights out to nostalgia’s previous owner who agrees with her that the roofs of buildings need to be smaller. in both, I get the sense my father has already hit the pop fly under which he collapsed muttering baseball, baseball, ghost of a baseball.

~

~ On suicide

I was here long before you guessed my age

–

(our proverbial sister dons again the birthday suit of body language)

–

the dog won’t eat. might it know

we come from the family of sitting and dying?

~

~ On contact

hold kitten
like a rifle. pop

a paper sack
at your father’s

ear. ah, your father

who was made to kneel

for two
maybe three
things

(god, shrapnel) a flying saucer

from the wreckage of his church