{ FROM everything I touch remembers being my hand (2017) }
~
HALLELUJAH
the poor
in Ohio
say
Ohio
~
ALAS, TOUCH
sound’s shy historian, digger
of a hole
for the mouth
~
STRANGERS
for you I would covet the broken arm of a snake
in grief’s
heaven
~
WHOSOEVER HOLDS THAT REPETITION
CAN’T USE
ITS HANDS
let in them
a thunder, a counter
of breads
and sabbaths, an infant
struck
by owl
~
DAYDREAMER AND THE BOY
WITH
EXTRA BLOOD
wind’s childhood, nothing’s
gift exchange
~
SINS FROM THE FIELD
what time I have
to write
I spend
writing.
the insect
in the room.
infants for the end of tourism.
your mom
salting
the empty
doll.
~
IN ME THE PRISTINE BEARING OF HER LATER
MARK
some medicines / don’t work / how lonely
–
change diapers
else
you invent
evangelism
–
suicide, all those dates I didn’t
–
formless herself, she makes an image. animals
were the end
of god
~
WHAT A HORSE
KNOWS
OF GOD
hand-like, unfixable, the hugger of its neck
~
SECULARESQUE
death writes to me from an unfinished foster home. other things are also untrue. how subtle. light’s
list
of demands. focus
on crying
in a messy
car
absent
the animal
you’ll worship
last.
~
EASING
in no other life
am I you
in this
~
UNTITLED
it’s the day after jesus dies and father is a nightmare. I am the right size to change out his cigarette and I’m good at it. people in handcuffs pray over his legs.
father is a dream. a tree you notice in the dark- mom said that. mom says also that an ant’s heart is everywhere. everywhere in the ant.
jesus wants to be human. my brothers lift his body because my brothers do not yet know that neither will want to put it down. I mean to see them off but am rooted in what the future for a moment believes.
mother is not two people but she does go up and down the stairs as if she’s visiting two museums showing the same coffin. for every other step there’s a step that’s not. if my mouth at night is open, she sleeps outside in the ribs of a tree.
your sister is made of money and silence. has nocturia. death on other planets, oh. we’re just poor.
~
CAT NUMBER EIGHT
ENTERS
THE DREAM
how many fingers, fork
will hunger
lose
–
I am the trap
god sets
for my kids
~
ULTIMATA
how am I not a dream? I am not a place. I can’t say rabbit but can robot. my god knows one story. those I count when I’m sad are those I count when happy. grandfather means pipe-smoke and grandmother an outdoor pool. their daughter is a lamb-haunted horse. I see Ohio as an ear but still I ask what happened to the ear in question. I don’t sleep unless I need proof I never. I am older than the brothers I scare. travel is my sister’s vehicle. my dog is chewing on a rubber hand. it can’t be dark in both.
~
GUIDES
I say
into beer cans
code names
for ear
oh earth
to dog
miss
whole phantoms
~
THE INFANT
swimmer’s nostalgia. grain of salt.
the infant
is clumsy
but no one
knows
~
CIVILIZATION
for Brian Dawson
three unicorns
in horse’s
dream
surround
a lame
deer
can dream
be stopped
~
POEM
to koan
the world
makes perfect
sense, to motto
it makes
none-
two vowels
in the word
poor
~
TREE
OF NOTHING’S
APPLE
I know a woman whose shadow will never be the same.
–
we are eating from a bowl that wants to go home.
~
MOOD PIECE FOR HAND
I clip her nails
whose doll collects
cereal boxes
~
DOMESTIC HYPNOSIS
a birthmark
is a churchgoing
scar
~
DIALOGUES FOR APPLE
I am the light at the end of blood
or blood is my favorite dress
~
THE MOTHERS
from ghost-written diaries
a constant identity
late
for its own
resurrection
~
ETERNITY IS GOD’S SEARCH
FOR A MIRROR
close by, a man is relearning how to cradle his corrected son.
my luck
the alien
I saw
was disabled
~
GROWN WOMAN CRYING AT THE STATE OF HER
TEETH
two ears
at once
her wounded
boy
–
sleep has one god
absence, none
–
the cough
he had
the week
he was missing
~
PASSINGS
clown car
too much
for ghost
~
DESIRE, FOOTNOTE
drunk above a son I cannot feed, I don’t long to swim
but do
to have my mother’s hair
combed
by a horse-
birth
oh when
was I tamed
~
SURGERY, AGE EIGHT
these names, before you were born. colorblind orphan, yawnless fish. ghost with calendar.
look at me
when I’m invisible
~
HOSPITAL
YOUNG
years back I met god in some nowhere town before I was born to teach symbolism. I know what room I’m in by the tv show my mother’s watching. dear ghost, I hope you like the parrot. from what word did letter come. existence mourns non. grieve on sight.
~
WILDLET
I lost you before I lost you. your stickmen were free of anxiety. they left a church to the potbellied ghost of your muscle. their word for tree was branch. what god couldn’t finish they called wind. baby an air that stopped breathing.
~
NOTES FOR INSECT
I will never know a ghost story
god does not
~
YOUR FATHER
a barber
in a swim cap
combing
the dream
for a surgeon’s
toothpick
~
PAIRINGS
(i)
no one in heaven is named after god.
place is an animal. animal a cure
for déjà vu
(ii)
my hands
are the hands
my hands
could rescue
(iii)
I was wrong. now is not
the afterlife
of the present.
not
yet
(iv)
our towels are asleep in the oven. our surroundings
lonesome.
/ mom severs mother from the nude vocab of our nakedness
~
MY
QUIET QUIET
SON
“Probably I’ll die like this,
a long time ago.” – Franz Wright
I will never forget hearing god pronounce your name
to a ghost obsessed with wolves
out there in the dogness
~
LIFELIKE AND KIND
in a home
for animals
that have tried
to undress
we weigh
the child
and the child
the doll
~
SO
SANG
the person
who reports
photos
missing, my sockless
brother, the tooth fairy’s
bones
~
THE STONE
sack race. minotaur.
(the stone)
a before
and after
picture
of absence.
~
STORIES FOR MEN IN THE MORNING
a brother sleepwalks and beats his sister. daylight, brother looks for her abuser but can’t stay awake long enough to catch the person he doesn’t know he is. sister fears what he may become. I have two children, Object and Permanence. they examine my spotless body
like aliens
who cannot hurt their own but want to.
–
boy has no name
so town
has no name
–
when my younger brother was born, his program made him human. because of this, my mother was thrown in jail. my own program gives me the power to look like anyone I’ve seen. I need you to write down what you look like because it’s me to the rescue.
–
her hand is a ray gun that can only stun babies not yet born. her grief is a time machine that wants to grow old.
–
as they had no memories of being children, mom pretended she had been their mother and told them stories of the funny ways they’d been in trouble.
~
UNTITLED
fog overtakes toad
& boys
are born.
ghost yoga. crucifixion.
train is a tunnel
train’s never
seen.
two dead crows- I’m shoeless again.
~
UNTITLED
after seeing the girl I have a crush on sign my friend’s arm cast, I spend the weekend jumping out of a tree, trying to land on my left, in the backyard of the last person who knew to hide the head of god. I break nothing but the blood from my nose could fill a football. vandalism starts in the face. it’s dark. I treat my mouth like a scratch.
~
UNTITLED
for JP
running with my brother
those three miles
seconds
kept
by a watch
of salt
the bland
sons
of distance
the names
of the born
between
~
UNTITLED
we bid
in Ohio
on a pack
of condoms
dropped
by the invisible
man.
birth approaches its black stoplight.
in clothes
that fit
I feel
remembered.
~
CRAFT
a woman
with a handsaw
whose rabbits
dream dove
~
PROTECTION SPELLS
bible and the missing
book
of aspirin.
fast food chains.
mourners.
~
A GROWTH HORMONE FOR PHANTOM LIMBS
not roadkill
what crawls
from a costume
~
UNTITLED
I am not sure which of us has no one
the dog
or the me
–
violence
my crippled
editor
hides
her hair
in grey
spiders
–
grief takes a picture of something I drew
~
FOR SLEEPING
the barber and the cyclops
in the nosebleeds
~
WINDOWSILL
I believe my mother when she says we are here to forget the girl god was trying to impress. that we are to follow starvation to its wrongly named foods. that breads are condemned
birds. scissors the writer’s churchbell.
~
DRILL
imagine having to haunt doom. sole cornstalk in the dreamworlds of tree. I cannot track the beauty of my children. it’s as if they are egging the model airplane of a pilot who loves matches, declawed cats, and wax museums. imagine chickens. leaving the anthill.
~
SOUL
warn a crow
you’ll forget
your past
~
UNTITLED
for Kaveh Akbar
all this time, ghost, we’ve been writing about the wrong body. poems talk of me like I’m here. nostalgia adrift on an oyster boat. empty acne on the face of god.
~
UNTITLED
heaven wasn’t called heaven until it was full. we are made of water and there’s glass between us. when my son is asked to rate his pain he says his blood feels like a feather. I sleep at the foot of his bed often, a crooked something, a melancholy numeral…
his body- I don’t know. it repeats what most are made to recite. my brother has a ghost can see cats.
~
UNTITLED
we are brave
because
one at a time
we are brave
but the mother
hamster
eats her young…
these mouths
age
in a dreamless
noise
~
PAWINGS
the fat kid
whose mother
owns
a video store
will
for a dollar
let you touch
his eyeball
he is maybe
the church
of the seizure
I had
in a church
that is gone
much
like blind
invisible
women
~
LAUNDROMAT AS A THING THAT LAUNDROMAT
DEVOURS
I prayed, yes
but in
a dream-
ghost
was a book
with pictures
~
DOORBELL, HOUSE OF NOTHING
I cured my son
in another
language
that of a perfect child
born
to draw
a circle-
doorbell, house of nothing
~
MOOD PIECE FOR APPLE
a father remembers making dinner and whistles at the sober. his death nudges a turtle in the direction of some absent creature chewing gently on its tongue beneath a poster of a missing dog. lightning prays wheelchair and preaches lawnmower. there is a woman here said to live on hair. on whose mouth we survive. birth thinks only of itself. not a day goes by in the grocery of touch.
~
INTRODUCTION TO FATHER
I don’t see
size-
stormcloud, stone
it’s no
gift
–
it is hard
kiddo
to be a mouth
in the land
of embrace
–
love
two of your fingers
the rabbit they make
they wound
~
AGAIN THE MOTHERS
have kissed the ear
of a small
boy
they do not
love
whose voice
eats bread
through a mask…
have scored their grief
as inefficient
sadness, and accepted
bowling balls
from three-fingered
men.
~
EIDOLONS
hit your children. my own, I love the way they look
before I don’t. every shadow
leaves its post
~
SUICIDE
ETIQUETTES
the microscope god avoids by sucking his thumb
–
dream and blood- their unpainted rooms
–
the deer tipped off by mannequins
–
a zookeeper’s empty mom
~
FURTHER ANNOTATIONS FOR
SON
god closes the food truck and waits for his carefully chosen porn to buffer.
even
over this
a star
~
ENTRY
I tell the mechanic my car sounds like it’s drinking blood / I am not trying to be funny / end.
–
abuse, 1980: because a tornado won’t touch a house on fire
–
in the nursery, the babies with elderly features…
~
BEFORE TOUCH HAS A BODY, WE CAN SEE
ONLY
before touch has a body, we can see only
the hands of god
how they fumble
loneliness
and imagine
birth
for a family
of small
permissions
~
PREFACE
I am from the future (I miss
you) there is a way
to contort
the body
and deepen
scarecrows (my son
has an illness)
I’ve seen
in pictures
~
FIRST
DAY
I pine more for the being god was thinking about when he made you. visually, the moons of pain. where circled by what. the one-eyed lambs.
~
FLYOVER
thinking for shadow
(all my homes were entered at night)
and then for the crow
hit by the crow
our baseball
~
PUPPETRY
inspecting my son
after a fall
the blind
and photogenic
~
UNTITLED
one cannot love the ocean
without asking an orphan
to be
specific.
I tell my words
to use
my poems.
father he quotes
echo. his shadow
a short story
by ghost.
~
LIKE A FATHER
eating lamb
for his lovely
misheard
boy
~
FORTY
-ONE
alien that I failed
my boys
are lonely
~
CHASMIC
each drawing I do of my face is uglier than the last. god sends me hands I can’t use and prays for his hair. if I have a daughter, she is returning items to a small mirror. keep me if I don’t.
~
MODELING FOR POEM
I don’t think I was born to see my face. my father looks like he’s about to say nothing. her vocabulary comes and goes.
~
DECONSTRUCTIONS FOR
SON
the day you were born
you were killed
in a dream
where some
were wounded.
I was there / to look / at the sky
~
DEATH HAS TOO MANY MOTHERS
in me like a sympathy pain
is Christ, her language
a fasting
echo
~
STARVATION NAMES ITS
FOOD
ask the sickest boy what a pig says to the pink phone of god
leave fingerprints for his hand to find
have words
with echo-
he will die
he will not die
laughing
~
HUNGER ANOMALIES
your son
he has
two brains
that’s great
but we’re looking
for water’s
stomach
~
PARADISE
high we are beaten for acting like the same horse. memory invades the afterlife. I talk only to the animal that takes me to my sound.
~
SALVES
i.
a puppet’s
glove
a gift
from the pilot
of paper
doll
ii.
a sock for the melancholy of distant hand
~
ARTLESS
ache’s password
is ghost
I mean
what I hear
~
THE INCURABLE
I am framed by a quiet that exonerates silence
god is the story
is not
the teller
don’t unpack, she says
we will be
eyes
tomorrow puts it out there
it wants
kids
animals have two souls
go
like light
to undress
~
DID WE KNOW THAT DURING SEX
A PUPPET PROTECTS ITS RIBS
the enhanced sameness of being alone. the last name of a circle. suicide has done its homework. pretend you’re the someone pretends to be you.
~
THE GHOST
OF HIS MOTHER GIVING SHOES TO A SHADOW
sympathy pain, crib
of a normalized
hunger
~
OUR DOG IS GROWLING AT A HOTEL PILLOW
god remembers
a giant
that to us
was plain
~
DRIVING HOME FROM MY SON’S
HOSPITAL
forgetting
to signal
~
PROSELYTE
the cricket
makes sense
because it looks
like silence
is doll
always
or never
sick
~
OUR BLIND END
I would read my books by the light of brother burning his. sister could heal with her bare back the angels of lab rats. father drank water and mother its hiding place.
~
UNTITLED
I was dead
I thought about death
I died
sleep was the only spotlight my mother could avoid
if you see a wolf, know suicide
has stopped
working
swimming with father, I said jesus is not the best scarecrow
and father said
swim
I still can’t find Ohio in the the bomb-maker’s Ohio
sister
she feels
brilliant
when there is less
of her
to eat, she is often alone
people I’ve never been to
~
INSOMNIAC, RAINBOW, HELL.
we heard it last night. the bell on the rabbit’s foot. it made mom want to cook. and sleepwalk. and mice did the wave.
~
DEATH
& PRAYER
i.
to be called forth
from nothing
how perfect
/ no melancholy
is fair
to insect
ii.
would that we could be separated
later
by birth
that we might enjoy
shape
/ the darkness of being remembered
~
INTIMATIONS
daughter has a language keeps her quiet.
penny
is a pillow
for my father’s
blood.
lamb- every other
~
WRITING MOTHER SAYING MOM
before you know it, you’ll create time.
let now
give me hope
for the past
~
GOMORRAH
was a clarity to being beaten. to arriving before clockwork. a clarity also in the poems of his abuser. psalm and caricature. snail and gasmask. I miss hand, he’d say. because it misses raft.
~
TEACHER OF DOLLS
sister has to use her body to care for her body. teacher of dolls. believer in the grenade become star. her blood she is told could ruin her baby’s nose. her thumb is a comma. god’s is a crow.
~
UNTITLED
two boys at a rest stop
one cowboy, one indian-
also there
a mother’s
burning
car
and the mother herself
flipping open
a pocket knife
oh place, you are not
my first
language
but
it was men
created
machines
that they could tell
those machines
the little
they knew, and it was god
found god, and it was your father
that with his father
while in
their astronaut
poverties
took shyness
from a gun
~
IN PRAISE OF THE BOY CLEARING PINECONES
FROM
PUPPET
RIVER
/ his stomach
attended
like church
~
LOSS IF BORDERING ON LOSS
the past disappears to haze the same childhood animal. touch carries non-fiction to belief. earth lands on earth and is somehow loved. there are dolls to skin and there are dolls contagious. any mirror is a fishbowl from hell. she was a good swimmer but was not eaten fast enough. lazily, I remain born.
~
PRETEND
ME HOME
the bridge
the broken arm
of god.
the ventriloquist, her immortal canary…
birth the jackpot
hit
by grief. a wiseman
mourning
his third
son.
~
DIALOGUES FOR HAND
I was a fish. it wasn’t enough.
–
we’re the founders
of absence. off the clock
–
like newborns
~
SOME DISTANT DEVASTATION
a man turns a brick into a bird, yeah
call beautiful
what you can.
bird has no idea
and my home
is there.
~
UNTITLED
we come for death, stay for mother.
I cut myself
might a memory
make room
for sound.
god studies his own cure.
holes
for breathing
some get
to heaven.
~
SADNESS, NOT
GRIEF
god’s brain was devoured by a stone.
I saw my father. he was on his second bird.
his teeth were yellow.
or yellowish.
little doors, little me.
a room of real yellow.
~
PIG RAIN
a cigarette burn and the time it tells once. gum in the puppet’s hair.
blind date
with birth.
~
OASES
until I found her cigarettes, my mother was a giant. is there something I can say online that will give me hands? leave an empty laundry basket in a cave that’s crying. rain gives water a church.
~
MINE
his whole life he described himself
to a dying boy
~
POLY
I leave the dream, I come back
this is how
it’s done
there is
a record
~
EXHIBIT
grief in the near future
(practicing)
safe
grief
~
BRINK
I have no memory that is not a silence we sang in unison
is this a ghost or the future of my teeth
is your dad still a god
I interpret the wrong dream
do you
forget
~
MEN
choose
three
to deny
shooting
~
A MOMENT OF SILENCE FOR THE SHY
the suicide of a mother’s
swimming
instructor. the browsing
history
of little
ghost.
~
CROWER
absence and removal, the parents
of nowhere
pity
they don’t
smoke
~
DREAM TELLS ME IT IS BECAUSE I MISS
PIANOS
dream tells me
it is because
I miss
pianos
that I follow
a specific
cow
through nondescript
neighborhoods
none
abandon / dream
does not tell me
which half
of hide and seek
you were
when baby
~
BELLED
dancing
badly
in a small
eye
–
by beehive
what churches
know
~
BOYS ON LAND
a birdwatcher with broken hands, I am the cry of my mother’s body. she climbs the tree she was left in and smokes back the years of breathing underwater. whatever you’ve been through this poem waited for me to survive.
~
IN THE BORROWED DRESS
OF A MORE
VIVID
SIBLING
oh
voice, my immediate
orphan
~
I DREAM AT AUCTION OF A HELL FOR GHOSTS
and stork
is never
home
~
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