untouched in the capital of soon / rocks have the softest shadows / etc sorry

rocks have the softest shadows, 237 pages
poems, Dec 2020

untouched in the capital of soon, 187 pages
poems, Sept 2021

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FROM [ rocks have the softest shadows ]

~diets of the resurrected~

Ohio prolonged:

My drug use writes to a jellyfish

~

There are certain rooms I walk out of to make my son heavier. Certain campfires disguised as nests. God is here but has forgotten sending Death to fetch the infant brainwashed by sleep. Death is here but location lasts forever.

~

Ohio cut short:

I am gathering the eggs and giving each one a name as if each is a body part favorited by those angels of the geographically vacant and then my mom calls to me and then accidentally to my brother and her voice it never comes back

~

Ghost and angel are never together when they see God. Their loneliness keeps us apart.

~

In our hair are the bugs that believe they’ve died on god’s skin. Does emptiness dream of its original? I still think babies learn to talk by saying they itch from being looked at. One of our children will deserve to be lonely.

~

When it gets cold, we tell each other it’s okay to use a photograph instead of soap. It is not common for language to keep its word. If you’re poor enough, snow takes the pulse of the moon. We don’t believe in the soul. But ate something to bring it back.

~

As grief swallows those insects made of repetition and As god locks herself in the bathroom built for her father and As I mimic choking on the cord that wants to belong to the phone that reads your mind and As her baby waits to hear if it’s a boy or a girl who meanwhile touch and As the beekeeper befriends for reasons known to homesickness the owner of a gun

that was used

~

Ohio sexuality:

A private pencil erasing nobodies from a blue past. A way for fish to keep passwords from God. A toy car from the world’s saddest drive thru and sirens in silent movies overlooked.

A pink light. How it cared for snow.

/\/\/\ \/\/\/

FROM [ untouched in the capital of soon ]

~far notes~

The bomb is never here long enough to know it’s found us. Son in bird years you’d be dead. A stomach holds on to its hand-shaped sleep.

~doctrines~

Dropped on its head for saying footprint, the baby begins its work of collecting only those sounds it can scare. Its father mothers otherness as one who watches a film to make the world worse. Its brother hunchback and sister backstroke are viewed as two stomachs waiting for hunger to dry. Because my mouth is empty, I want to kiss you to the sound of god counting footfalls on a mountain path. For one, I have never been completely covered in bruises. Also, I was in the spotlight when my mother was asked to describe a sponge. Instead, she identified the break in the letter where a father changed pens and childhood as the longing of Eve.