lost priest
I come from a place where a school bus hits a dog and the bus driver barks and all her kids play dead
boy in darkness
blood is a movie and none of it
yours
the story outside
a boy in a diaper
covered in flour
a sadness specific to elevators
cocoon
on every
menu
lightning storms
in a wedding dress
worn once
and haunted
by paper cuts
going
at her dolls
with a fork
too dark now over nothing to cry
cavity
a clock
dreamt
by a scar.
the scalpel
the ear’s
idea.
birthplace, hide your own.
no animal
harmed
in the making
of god.
late poem
one can only write so long
about loss
in pencil
find my house,
dog-on-fire
the rapture
grief is grief because it attempts to mourn the infinite. my leg’s blood becomes a branch. I breathe and think I’m eating.
sole
the spell we’re under for mocking the wrong ballerina
it learned here to roll over
there
to be
on fire
childhoods of dog-breath and wand
bornography
it is common for the male cannibal to carry the skin of the due child
fasting is a sin and starvation a commandment
orphans are given home movies and edible pillows
language is a head
we bring it cake
annihilatives
as drawn, the boy’s
alien and cow
evoke rescue
dream: a toothless sheepdog is spooning roadkill in a wax museum dedicated to famine
go on, birth
take silence
from a baby
annihilatives
dream: a contortionist on a stretcher
bulimics
at a tortoise
crossing
annihilatives
you drive a clown car into a crowd
it is how you mourn
the accidental burning
of a doll’s
body-sock
and this I understand
as a city
kind of thing
as a way to eat
darkness
among friends
darkness
from a stomach
a way to lose
blood’s password
yourself
in bread
annihilatives
the present happens at different times. fetus, comma, tadpole. surgery, please tell this mask
my face went down on nothingness.
annihilatives
dream:
dream:
dream:
dream:
dream:
dream:
dream:
dream: a mummy obsessed with what doves eat
dream:
dream:
dream:
dream:
dream:
dream:
dream:
dream:
dream:
dream:
dream: sock puppets on oxygen
annihilatives
the brainwashed and the blindfolded will then switch children
and you will spend a year
a year
at least
throwing a slipper
at a farm machine
dream: grief a mile
grave
an inch…
you won’t eat much
and your eyesight
will trade its crow
for a bar of soap
your father will fake his death
to distract
room service
from his country
roots
and an insect
inside a stick
will die
and the stick
will live
annihilatives
go home, sadness
-
of exposure
to birth
annihilatives
the first murdered woman was not killed by her sister.
stop me
if you’ve
not heard
annihilatives
this dream again where no one likes me
the overeater I sleep for
empty
grief
has a swimmer’s
stomach
ribbon on a blindfold
suicide
is death’s
unicorn
ambulations
poetry and suicide
the two left feet
of a child
forced to play
horseshoe
horse
a waste
of strangeness
supplication
is voice
the shadow
of song
swimmer
whose blood
has feathers
childhood (i)
the body of jesus
pulled from the sea
childhood (ii)
I am, in the dark of an unwashed submarine, kissing his head
like it had
a message.
curvature
in my plainness a seesaw
in her dream jaw her dreamboat’s jawbone
in our daily belly
in the church of rolling our own
a film
ghosting
a film
in a rug made of bread a tooth made of bread
in mannequins where small things kneel that are living
in claw-marks and in jigsaws of the crucifixion
in
crows balloons of the strangled
a scream in Ohio is my elsewhere parade
allow me, wind, my unnoticed resurrection and forgive my smaller ear. the sex we had saved to cut the bread of bilingual angels is now a ghost watching sleep improvise. church bell beats dog-whistle and rocking chair empties horse.
the hazing of our assigned animals
when it was said
cannonball
I heard cannibal
and wondered where
was my helmet
my dad as a boy was bullied
by evocation, as a man
by the flawlessly
deaf
puppet to puppet, I only have two hands
the future
is all
you see
hills and stars
for her date with the giant, mom is putting on her face. our time, invisible chameleon, is over.
brain of a white mouse.
whole children
whose nights come to them in food
wrote lullabies
for cocoon
and stuttered
firsthand
are they gone
the cats of the doll-faced arsonist
how does one
earn
loneliness, or slip
from an overlong
baptism
roof love
alien
to me
were the ashtrays
failed boats
of teeth
for my angry
quiet
brother
vacuum
lose them all, dogface
teeth were pills
god couldn’t
swallow
physique
pain a shadow’s bed-hopping rain puddle
idea
a boy
in a homesick
elevator
conception
lost
like you
my memory
twice
otherhood (i)
loneliness the born artifact of my father’s rented dream. god the hobby of replaced machines. forgiveness the eldest stowaway and mistress of the seasick hologram. the monster you became to attain formlessness. mom a rabbit. her dying frog. hunger erased by what it loves.
otherhood (ii)
it is not real, of course
the trailer park
on fire, the accepted
field-
wheelchairs
crossing
without us
god and time are the same age
a child, an oven
how both
distract
touch
we got our hands on some fingerprints and did not feel poor
the invisible man’s ghost, them polaroids
of sister’s
feet…
dream differently, microphone
ballerina
dog whistle, nothing’s church-bell:
my mother, handcuffed
still worships
wasp
mothers, acoustic
we are maybe
inside
an Ohio
factory
childless and ready
for a refresher
on orphan
etiquette-
word is
there came
a cow
from the nothingness
that drank
nowhere’s
father
and sleep
is death’s
babysitter
last blue thing
choking
inside
a whale
/ sucker
from the world
of hands
no system
food on my plate, I am always one suicidal hairdresser away from my past…
lead your lives, touch
darker farms
food
saved
from a house
fire
-
the cult following of nostalgic paranoids
-
a star, this deer
as it prays
for moth
morale
image
made
no beast.
think of it-
death
was human
would you say, mouth
that god
made a deal
with nothing
fealties
mowing the lawn
dad swallows
a bug.
sister is folding her eyelids back
and brother
his diaper
stays on.
mom on a small map
is making
noise.
the animals are what god sees
in animals. soon
a birthmark
on a tooth.
snakes are made of nothing
I don’t know why it is that this thing in my father merely comes loose when in me it disappears, but am grateful that my mother can hear him getting ready for church no matter the rattling of my hunger at the weepy shapelessness of spoons.
campestralia
i.
hailstorm a midwestern cairn for cracked eggs
hiccup
the small
afterlife
ii.
figures, maternal
step naked from a.m. houses
scream
to be
collected, we’ve all seen
the rooster
reenter
the clock
iii.
birth, go to heaven-
god
is time’s
way
of showing
history
that death
has no
experience
iv.
and the pestersome
bat
asleep
is the cross
of Ohio
crows
the blank
does nothing
in hell
but draw
transformative melancholies
frog
in the throat
of a lowing
cow
dad, smoking
two nearby deer
nosing that headlight
into place
poem is dead
father with his stomach missing
a fishhook left in a dream
a peeping
tom’s
basilisk
holy ghost
I have a camera
sets a trap
for silence
an animal
you can borrow
a full-grown scarecrow
death’s first parrot
I have children, a suicidal thought
that can love
up to three
a pilot’s
paper seashell
parade for sorrow
I miss
blinking
access verses
a classroom, a house
but never
the ghost
of a church
-
the boys
they play
scarecrow
loves
horse, and the girls
the shepherdess
on a boat
names her dog
-
hey, distance
lose
the baby
(says
the empty
box)
pairing
my body at three years old
is being carried
to a mailbox
by my mother
who blizzard
or no
puts her ghost
on the map
holding the baby
a deleted voicemail of a boy asking his mom how to prepare a past meal. my handwriting an insect I want the best for. dream and the moth it won’t finish.
the mud on god’s cheek
at birth we are given a ladder we can’t see.
our feet
bare
farness
the last robot to name its baby.
two smokers
back-to-back
in the high
corn.
the spoonfeeder’s ferris wheel.
litterbug’s
shadow.
vespers
them raccoons out there is tarrying*
up
yr bible
-
*tearin
-
border: my eyes can’t stop what the back of my head is eating
mirror: a godless hyphenate
-
my man is a body whose moon is vacant
-
they is out there to flood
sightseers
with basilisk
porn
-
in the valley of my choking
the fingers of my father
are going
dog’s-collar
purple
-
out-the-way churches. and acne
viands
no person was made in the harming of this creature.
hands off, angel,
the baby’s
glove.
lording
she puts down the book once it begins to read like it remembers being written. it’s my book. do you know this man? his sight returned while he ate. boys play freeze tag to sadden birds.
dying at home
bring little, for I am a small room.
my clothes are yours and have always been lonely.
from nowhere
came beauty
to avoid
god.
bruise, ye
from nightgown
to blanket.
be kind, history
to those
in my dream.
committal
leafing through the milkman’s picture-book of outhouse graveyards
happy to taste the gum on the buried shoe
reverie a learned behavior
god a tornado warning and hearing
a ghost town, this
a cigarette from the purse
of a past
/ mother
shift
asleep
I am headless
in a clawfoot
tub
the half-awake
boy
on my chest
the disoriented
pulse
in the hand
of god
tin
give childhood
some time
let vengeance
travel
/ say it wrong
my name
while whale
watching
rattle
forget, sorrow
your anniversary
in case
you’re not
alone
two koans
deader
than his animals
that could speak
to language?
doll traffic
it is not a darkness to call it the demon’s untouchable telephone
I’ve referred
to worse
and anyway
time is the gospel
of disappearance
in stories, my brother has a tail
and speaks
mailman
perhaps there’s not enough to do
the tree has horns
peal
the sculptor’s son dreams of acne
a sister so light
so moved
by shadows…
mom a statue
good
with faces
later fights
our lost
way
of thinking
forgave
different
films
tell
/ my death I was here to gather proof
/ my children
to paraphrase
questions for shadow
god
as spotlight
unmanned
or not
anklebiters
what in the history of blood
has blood
discovered
mom is hanging laundry from the future
regret is still looking
for a god
I learn cocoon
and boyishly
cross my legs
the lightning
when you saw it
was it clean
form
a creatureless forest
in the minds
of men
with shovels; a field.
/ birth outgrew its crooked coat
cognate
to build something inside the church
they had to close
the church
those who wouldn’t normally disappear
were said to be helping
shape began its story
with veal
and ended
with the man
dad choked
for nine
months
I imagined
foreign
injurious
objects
and my brothers
spoke
from a sandbox
of seeing
a late
deer
on the roof
of a nursing home
dreamlike weaponry
it’s no small animal that the world came back for us
so, bullet
only god himself can enter the church of the easily missed
so make
of boy
a stray
being
poem
to present oneself so falsely-
be happy
for the work
apple
in defense of snake, this is my mom’s curling iron
/ ghost
a vacancy
I cannot
dismiss
no kids in Eden
door to door we are selling knock-knock jokes
I am the body
travel
came with
war footing
a parrot
sawed in half
by peace
or quiet
notice
hooked on silence, oh sleep
/ long before its descent into me
windowless the museum of weight loss
brother puts the basketball under his shirt so he can light my cigarette.
we born
to miss
animals.
infancy
who is my brother?
a boy
fishing
from a ruined
helicopter
-
where is my sister?
being seen
by a ghost
-
am I alone?
dumbfounded
by rest
-
has anyone called my mother?
these tracks belong to the animal
drinks
from your father’s
bowl
-
is there a name?
for some
words
-
tell me there’s a church. small
to a turtle
boy lord
boomerang,
the toy of the lonely and the gospel
of the weak
dog...
perfection
is bad
art
repairs
the past
misses
your child
also
god is silent in every language
mom is driving. mom is washing the spider that closed her mouth. sister has a stick of gum but says she doesn’t. dad is half-asleep and cutting the fingernails of the babies he dropped. there’s a scab on my arm that looks like my brother’s nose. we pass church after church. sound horn for buried bees.
tongue
a prop
fingerprint
from the object’s
dream
of being
touched
or a pig
that gets
fire
to keep
a diary
acolytic
it does what it can
the world
to belong.
I saw a wheelchair
chase
an ambulance.
babies don’t know
they can’t be
alone.
we peopled this.
beauty
you look like someone
who’s not
famous
god
before he died
under god
we are photos
of a dreamless
fact
films for headcase
i.
amnesia
the perfume
of a dead
ghost
ii.
sleepwalkers
for a more
christ-like
hand signal
iii.
blue hound at a pilot’s grave
a spider, worried
this cloud from a father’s mouth
before it is ruined
by some kid
who’s learned
recently
her shapes
and not
to smoke
levitations
mom is trying to iron a spacesuit
car horns
they foil
hypnosis
in the past I am describing god to my attacker
I don’t take good care of things.
I can’t even give you
examples.
reflect, time, on what you’ve done
the insomniac
the conductor
of the sleepwalker’s
train
the centipede
a sort of
wrecked
spider
bunny-eared
watersnakes…
god
took all
my mom’s
ideas
reading and writing
which one of us did loneliness hear coming?
dead child
the future
the past
both are ready
to talk
mom is using after the dream a home pregnancy test as a microphone
I am counting
the realest
sheep-
my brother’s toothbrush
good as new
in my broken
hand
her father, his pipe
all
them broken
babies
of tornado
drills…
eat, she says
to a fog
machine
the more I sleep, the more there is of the future
I can dream my son’s weight in birdseed
bird
the swimmer’s
bread
wreath
i.
upstairs
the last
to go
ii.
iii.
door
is so
forgetful
each ear is an only child
shaped
by a scarecrow
barber
known
to cut straws
for quiet
angels
satan
awake and watching his bird feeder
a memory
I roll from my mother
my father
sketching
the ghost
of a stone
nostalgia while we wait
no god. no wind.
sick son’s kite.
the pea
asleep…
reader
of everything
his writing
destroyed
the book of boy
/ be buzzard a shadow stuck in a trash bag
/ be knees full of milk
sympathizer
the many plain
sons
of god
their parking
tickets
declination
in forgetting how many to save, god wants to know
are you still
seeing
things…
I remember the animal, the appropriate
mask…
once held, is the baby
less
wild
is the room
in the room
poem
remember to rub them, the hands of the slow learner.
and to say their prayer
the one for the bald princess
& her child’s
perfect
somersault
gutless data
it is always a neighbor of ours tries to schedule amnesia and gets put down for suicide. it is always me on a farm machine hasn’t moved in years writing a poem for mom. it is never a mediocre ventriloquist marries a better.
theaters of removal
I have for appetite a pair of scissors and for despair a silent vase. I have a louse like a flower and a crush on a doll. I take my meals with a three-shouldered angel. the head of my abstract dog is highchair real. food is a ghost. I rake the hair.
straying
mom takes photos of things we are near.
a piece of gum that won’t bleed.
a plastic bag from the head of a carousel horse.
the circle’s dark past.
unrisen
this oven
this chapel
of the television’s
right
to privacy…
which paw
for mom’s
mosquito
bread
the outright sadness of his vanished physique
far be it from me
to stir
the madness
of fish.
age allows that we are younger for god.
sleep
is a shadow’s
bookmark.
absences
imagined
while losing
loss
a dolphin
the shyest
mourner
witch
in a swimsuit
after’s daughters
the disappeared inventor of the present
her reflection
in surprised
water
hell on moon
the building we enter to worship the church.
stones of boated nights.
a somehow
seasick
deer.
the swimmer a storm-cloud from the land of grief
not a fish
here
can go
missing
imp
the man digging in his yard is looking for his dog. this is my lucky window. in this much silence, a baby could get a tooth. a mom a finger if a car door slams. the man digs and the ice comes for its heartbroken road. wounds move in a deerless world.
born
disguised
as
as if
I would know
upside
/ this talk of home
/ bush of the hissing baby
/ snow
that can see
blood
in the dark
/ events
my body
held
/ first haircut,
broom, crucifixion
animal masks on the floor of the ocean
mouse, teacup of the missing stork-
owl, lamb of night-
this was god. he was sad and everyone noticed.
kingsoftrain 