{2008, lack}

circa 2008, revised but not revived:

~

[ghosts]

we think her a fool

god’s wife-

she brings
to her neck
the neck
of a soldier

while kissing
the unscented
wrist
of her son.

the shadows men believe
we are
we take

as lovers.

~

[care] for Timothy

when you are
visibly
healthy

I will sit blindfolded
beneath a tin roof
and wait for rain

that I might know
what you hear
in your drifting
basket
about which
pluck
the lips
of those
fish

I thought
I had come
to feed

~

[an exaltation]

town, not only
small. nor full
a pack
of ribless
dogs. cigarettes

half sucked

some hand
passing through
an old web
in a field
with a tree

where a tree
hunches

over husk
of beehive

like a long fingered
priest
at the orb

of his crotch.

~

[remote]

dogs, here, they parrot
the passing
sirens. and trucks
pull nightly
away.

~

[the yield]

he pick up a stick. raised it
ragged tongue
of creek. licked himself
with it
thin. he’d been
not a meaner day
awake, not since
father
had booted
his bottom teeth
for saying
pussy
into the roof
of his mouth.

right now

someone say
lord. look them
let go

kites
the girls
like they knees
don’t work

without them.

~

[sober hosanna]

on my way to a rose, I passed your father.

he was brushing a moth
from the ageless fly

of his eye. his body

he said
had been called
by a bell.

claimed
he’d counted
ever hill

in the midwest. his bike

he’d pushed up
all three. in the late field

your father
did not ask.

I told him you were.