{sorry, things}

[ NOTES FROM LIFE UNDER BELL ]

(i)

on video my cousin is singing a song she’s learned by heart. she’s maybe four. I don’t know where to begin. this pond behind her, perhaps? that in my memory is the size of a fire pit. or maybe, here, in the darkening sameness of those sentences strung together by cows. or years from now, even, with the word no and her sister’s lookalike being assaulted by an only child in a library of fragile non-fiction. my cousin is singing a song she’s learned by heart. she’s five. a careful six. sound’s fossil. no city half-imagined. no insect obsessed with privacy. time matters to the frog we catch.

(ii)

there are days he is the son of muscle memory and funny bone. days his hands are gloves from a small god. poor god, he says, and grows. days he can carry a circle to any clock in the town of hours. days his past can be heard by his siblings- you’re beautiful the way you are. days his blood pushes a bread crumb through his thigh. days his scar is a raft for ear number three. nights his brain / the separation of church and church.

(iii)

violence is a dreamer. a boy on a stopped bus is dared to eat a worm. it feels authentic. alas, there is no worm. the devil knows to stay pregnant. word spreads about the girl without a tongue. cricket lover. and then, bulimic, when she won’t sneeze.

(iv)

the mother of your hand is smashing spiders with her wrist. we have a high-chair for every creature that eats its own hair. the twins in the attic have switched diapers. skeptics. voices heard by the ghost of my stomach.

(v)

it is snowing the first time my daughter drives alone. Ohio is cruel. stillbirth, old four-eyes. you want them to like you. the insects you save.

(vi)

a lawnmower starts then dies then is pushed by a noisemaker past fog’s dark church. an unprepared prophet drinks the milk meant for baby eyesore. my sister loses most of her hair putting together a puzzle of her mouth. a bomb is dropped on a bomb.

(vii)

the man his shadow and the woman her dream.

their child
its track
of time

(viii)

onstage a dog barks at an empty stroller. the mosh pit is weak. last count had three pregnant, three resembling the man who unplugged my father, and two praying for the inner life of a hole. onstage a boy is holding up a kite for another boy to punch. dog’s been tased.

(ix)

we put a museum on the moon. I had all my dreams at once. a mouse was wrapped in a washcloth then crushed with the songbook of baby hairless. fire treats grass like fire.

(x)

outside the bathroom’s designer absence, our melancholy impressed by symbolism, we form

a line

(xi)

tree: the unbathed statue of your screaming

shade: the folder of my clothes

(xii)

praying he’ll see again them cows of lake suicide, the handcuffed frog shepherd

prays he’ll see again them cows of lake suicide

(xiii)

a body to dry my blood. some god

seeing me
as a person…

how quickly birth gets old.

(xiv)

lonelier than creation, I have nothing on trauma. genetically speaking, I don’t think anybody expected us to spend so much time on one idea. this open umbrella. ghost at the keyboard.

(xv)

and in the spacecraft where a mother diapers the doll that makes her fat there plays the voice of god asking for a film crew none will miss

(xvi)

we wore clothes as an apology for being nearby. a door was a door. a ghost was a ghost and a door. the house was possible. its rooms were not. baby was a body spat from the mouth of any creature dreaming of a bathtub. I got this lifejacket from a scarecrow. said the redheaded tooth fairy.

(xvii)

his baby is wailing in its crib for its mother and he mans you up for a cigarette and blows on the baby’s face and somewhere you yourself have stopped crying as you are pulled from a pile of leaves by two people made of smoke

(xviii)

for a spine, doll prays to fork.

all kinds
of shapes
miscarry.

(xix)

one day my son is dying, the next he is not, and the next he is. day four: prayer is dismissive, but welcome. whose past is how we left it? body is delivered twice. beginning and end. nostalgia and wardrobe. middle eats everything. it snowed and I thought my blood was melting. could be the way you reason that happens for a reason. I was a kid when mouse was a kid. there’s no hope and I hope.

–

my son’s weight is a cricket on a piano key. it’s more than I can handle that god gave us god.

–

aside: we don’t come out faking our death, but are born because birth can’t sleep

–

aside:

I study lullaby
and lullaby
bruise

–

it takes four juveniles to recruit his thumb. his fist has been called: hitchhiker practicing yoga in a junkyard. I cannot visit the instant ruin that forgiveness creates.

–

sickness in the young is god’s way of preventing nostalgia from becoming the god I remember

–

I was beautiful but now I’m ugly. (now) being the most recognizable symbol of the present. this is the silence I speak of. my son says (more ball) and you hear (moon bone). he is very sick. his moon has bones.

–

the disappearance surrounding said event. a horse belly-up in water’s blood. see telescope. also, cane of the blind ghost. magician, maybe, on a rabbitless moon- oh cure.

oh silence afraid to start a sentence.

–

in the photograph a fist is cut from, a kneeling family of five is putting to bed

the unremembered
present.

–

traced, perhaps, for a terrible circle-

today was mostly your hand.

~

[ IN THIS LIFE ANOTHER IS YOU ]

father paints an abstract jesus. my sister bites at the shoulder strap of her bra. my brothers

to keep from crumbling
are sharing
bread.

–

I draw a violinist. a dog

at the neck of its owner.

–

in our imaginings
gutted baseballs

became

the skulls of small animals
through which
the wind

called heads.

–

in heaven’s garage
they’ve yet
to make
a horn
that works.

the kids have gone two or three years now without being raised.

the match
unlit
by your tooth
is paradise.

–

a refrigerator rocks in a junkyard.

either the door has jammed, or she

is pregnant.

–

a cement wall
scraped
in passing
by one
with a stick
is the love
we have
for father

–

depression is a dog whistle. I miss dinner sounding it out.

–

(when a scar of thunder / outs itself / I am blue)

or bluish

(like a sock in a blue
coat’s
pocket)

–

it is cruel to hang anything above a baby’s crib

–

I can only guess
I was happy
in the womb
with how
my mother
looked

–

the bunk
above mine
I call
deathbed

is

my brother’s-

he has
his own
way
of thinking

showerhead
is spotlight

–

here is a test: circle
the parts
of a circle

(a sameness)

in the parrots
we care for…

our suicides
fight
for position

–

in the apple
air
of hem
and haw
a pacing
uncle
blank
as a broom
regards
the lovemaking
half
of a doorknob

or

two men
carry a ladder
past a cemetery

one thought
between them

–

this nonfiction
not
what you’d
imagined

–

mother an artifact of paranoia

–

paper
scissors
milk

–

blacktop
pools
at the neck

of a crow.

half eaten
children
limp
home.

an umbrella. a bra. a harp.

a street we call satan.

–

water, make your fist. hold your breath
in a single
fish.

–

delirious
when the lights
went out
mother
would pull cocoons
from the oven
tell us
to stop
kicking

–

it was a very strong soap
she’d use

a soap that squealed
against

the skin

her heart
a hiccup’s
echo

her eyesight the sound of a drill

her eyes
two holes
in a turtle’s
shell

her eyes for seeing

the food in her mouth

–

the sobbing ventriloquist was my idea. mother and father they were taking turns moving shampoo through my hair as I hummed. doom was a color. a mare kneeling on a bed of maroon straw. miles off, an ambulance driver entered a silent film and tried to buy a garage door opener.

–

children from abusive studio apartments inherit warehouse jobs from problem immigrants. a bruise of urine darkens the front of your jeans. I am mugged in your dream and mugged in mine and mugged by a woman in both. for now, this field. my gestural father holding a broom for what he calls the welcome mat

of exodus. in memory alone I am alone.

–

under crow
and flat
on my back
in the loft
of my uncle’s
barn
my shadow
is still
she
who upright
confessed
so loudly
that her heart
flew
into a quiet
sky
as she
collapsed

–

on television
the world’s smallest ghost town. on a shadow

socks match

–

no longer graveyards, I tend what is everywhere resting. I crawl like a toothache, long with her death. the voices move from head to mouth.

a squirrel on fire. an act of god.

I don’t think seeing such things is enough to put

vague
& crow
into one bed. she is asleep

or fingered
by a man
with seven.

–

in a country store
a barefoot girl
walks on her heels-

long stride and baby.

the store’s owner
happily shelves
popcorn, gauze

the thought of his father
doing nothing.

–

beating my clothes
with me
in them
mother
irons
a man
from the moon

(who giggles in us poorly)

for love

–

if my father admits in his bed that some mice are alive when he bends
to the earth
a cornstalk
and lets
fly,

I have to find the mouse
that means
other mice.

–

wish I could dream away the bad mornings spent cheating on her sadness

–

illness, assault.

presence
a blank
petition

–

in the end my mother was mostly an ocean dipped into by lightning.

a mother whose hands were broken by recent events. events that evoke transcription.

–

assault:

maid
loses cart
to stairwell

–

illness:

a birthmark, a scar, and a tattoo

eating under
a blanket

~

[ FOOD ]

how to bathe
a red chameleon
from the childhood
of Moses

–

the boy on my shoulders says my hair is on fire. it is our longest running joke. he laughs so hard my ribs fall asleep in his childless stomach. he takes the cigarette from behind my ear…

his cough is a paintbrush. no father can kill god. the resurrected miss death.

–

books to step on, scarecrows

to kiss.

animal
a thing left speechless.

night
a lost
suitcase.

the apple, the quiet. brother’s

double
nodding off
on library’s
secret
horse.

door songs.

mother, mother, father-

–

it changed me none to see my father rubbing a lamp in a time machine. mother, too, ain’t been different

since.

mirror miss your clock.

–

I lost three days of my life. four

less
than my father.

I am sad when two people kiss.

I appear to animal
sounds
that my brother
makes. sister

tells me
with a look
that giving
birth
is the same
as naming
your source.

mom likes the way I say
hypochondriac

after every
meal.

–

a fish looking for its graveyard

I was in the dream
I was writing
down

–

the audition calls for a woman to pretend she’s missing her right ear. a day before I’m scheduled, I wear heels and have my boyfriend mangle my left. a day after, I’m holding the baby of those who’ve never underestimated their power to look away. I don’t get the part. and mom turns it down.

–

I can’t write and write at the same time. there are drugs in my father’s shoe and bread crumbs in my sock. sister can sing but says church gives her two left knees. mother squeezes the hand I feel sorry for. ah, sorrow- no bird walks on water and your babies

are all
neck.

–

I’m sorry you have to see this. if I could starve invisibly, I would. my son’s surgeon worships ventriloquy. do you dream of the sleep you’ve already gotten? or of a thing so sad it gives birth? my abuser talks as if one can lose track of a mouth. in god’s favorite book, my ghost gets a hobby.

–

my stories go nowhere.

god
and his tree
of hunger

–

the evil was mine, the face wasn’t. some were delivered by one who wore a monster mask.

the smallest mouth guard. viruses

transmitted
by dream

–

keep the baby

eats
during thunderstorms

–

while pacing the hallway of a floor that elevators skip, an amateur eulogist pictures an error-prone barber in a bath of milk who gave as a gift a rocking horse with a bad stomach to a child healing a cobweb for a starless bear.

~

[ WE BROUGHT HOME THE WRONG DYING BABY ]

I ain’t been talked to in so long my wife’s kid thinks I have amnesia. ain’t been touched since Ohio’s ramshackle symbolism swallowed up some organ donor’s shadow. I went yesterday to a funeral for a woman’s ear. told people what I was wearing was a bedsheet belonged to the man in the moon. told myself I had this microscope could see a ghost and that I’ve only ever lost an empty house. I don’t know how old I am but I know what year I want it to be. before dying I saw it flash how I should have died. low creature. tugboat.

–

father an optometrist inspecting a replica of a totem pole and mother an eel collapsing at the thought of a play performed in a stone.

and there, at the bottom of grief, a cup of dirt with nothing to bury.

–

mother is chewing gum like something fell asleep in my mouth. I say dog for both dog and puppy. pray for things I know will happen. a rooster through a windshield. a dried-up toad in a deep footprint.

–

mother and father give their word that all narrators are orphans. that blood is a short leash. sometimes, a fence. be, they say, the symbol your god remembers you by. tell your brother to act like a chicken. your stickmen to share a toothache.

–

I saw a cigarette with its mouth open. today was hard. hate is amazing.

god will die with his ear on my stomach.

–

the darkness has many stomachs and we’ve no one to tell my son he’s lonely.

seller of the disappearing stone, the mouth names everything and is born after eating a blindfold.

–

for desperation, boy puts a bird in a hand puppet. here a finger and there a worm, sadness has no family. oh fetus my moth of many colors. oh mosquito that bit an angel. time with my son

in scenario’s territory.

–

atavism

(god is someone’s calendar

–

valley

(a girl with a marble who answers to overdose

–

pulpit

(rooster ghosted by elevator

–

subculture

(in my years with the poor, I wrote nothing down

–

alpenglow

(the scalp will baby its grief

–

on muscle detail, the clapping boy from the cult of thunder brings a wheelchair to the last rocking horse known to model swimwear for the few dolls that remain married to the same mask. the boy is weak but maybe he puts two words together. like ghost

and exodus. for the second coming of the handcuffed animal.

–

the boy picking flowers for my shadow loves no one. everything I touch remembers being my hand. the world has ended, or started early. god’s heartbeat. sound’s watermark.

–

because her son can see the future, she is not yet born. god matters to the discovered.

–

overtook no cigarette. surprised no sleep. keyed the car

of a minor
toymaker.

radar is getting possessive.

–

for the gone and for the nearly, brother has the same stick.

I call belly
what he calls
eye
what answers

to limb

–

to speak
it needs gum
from the invisible
purse.

comes with everything. cries like me.

–

she says
three times
the word
brain
to her stomach’s
blue
mirror
and scores
sight’s wardrobe
of rags
in earworm’s
dream

–

there’s a comb
in my narrative, a goldfish

coming to
in a beheaded
angel