{ cap }

[ IDEATIONS ]

~~~~

the elderly
our unpraised
orphans
with healed
and self-taught
toys

~~~~

cancer is a pop gun and when I say missing I mean her body was seen by the lonely / her body / was having children but only those / we’d seen / in photos / I mean bus

of a christian
swim team

~~~~

when cooking, mama says she is burning the uniform of the country I was dragged through. she knows better than to come from rib. cheek, maybe. or fishhook.

~~~~

scar to my wound, this man believes in god. the last thing I learn is what I know. Franz Wright’s final book is called The Toy Throne. I understand this man when he says he was born with a disabled child. what is lightning

to a fish

~~~~

faith a shoelace in an unbroken egg

I stare at the letter x

~~~~

the plate

in god’s head
is a writer’s
dream. she crows

her three
words
for stoplight
as a doll

bites down
on a stick…

math is maybe not the best look for grief

and hunger

too academic

~~~~

after suicide, everything that happens is the past

~~~~

I am not a ghost,

hand
I use
the least

~~~~

the mothers they were rehearsing in the drive-thru
the sex talk for boys they thought
were still
alive

–

crush a white tick / you’ll become / a projectionist

–

sleep is a bleeding stopped by the eye

~~~~

with god
prepared
to remove
its white
stomach, the dream

sees brain
as the print
of its thumbless
hand

~~~~

/ to a breathing machine in a swimming pool

the angel says whale

/ my nightmare

has a whale. it takes grief

from a mule

/ my brothers are porn

and star. claustrophobes

haunting
the hard
to forgive

~~~

alone in that no-name church of dream

scales of grief
and thrown back
fish

~~~

with his mother’s purse under his arm
the gatherer
of knocked-out
teeth

tracks
to the entrance
of a waterpark
the so-called

last
deer to imagine
a rock

empty

~~~