( edits, country, & response poems, etc

country 1

Death is the only absence that absence honors.

Not seeing creatures 
up close
is home

country 2

No one prayed here
nor left
here to pray.

Hurry, math. 
The small gods

they lower
the footprint

country 3

Blue from making thin air,

we could almost
see
the snowball

in your mother's
stomach

country 4

A tooth taken by a tooth. 

The night 
on one 
knee. 

A child as friendless as a wrist

~~~~~

( response poems for Benjamin Niespodziany

i.

My sibling's white noise machine reminds angels that they've no young. 

There are three light switches per rooster. They are

The overlooked church of the eel

Frog's empty life

God sees an image 
that's been moved 
by me

ii.

Everything being done
is done
outside 
of a horse

Your mother's hearing loss keeps my voice from changing

Lightning dreams itself into a cat thrown from a moving car

A lit match 
enters a flashlight

iii.

dear Ohio the ocean is worried about a trapdoor

also about the ocean I want you to think about the number of limbs remembered by a bitemark 

and then our little satan using the same bowl for his food 
that he does 
for his water

iv.

Body language being kept alive in a ghost town.

Wind's missing child 
can't get sick.

v.

Loss sees its mother in its mother. Not all of us die. 

-

In hell, one forgets

hell's naked 
birds

-

Empty says it has a twin. 
Far says nothing.