kingsoftrain

the crow’s fear of inclusion. eve’s perfectly forgotten ribs. the nothing I mean to my dentist. the cemetery where all the un-boyed went to eat paper. the band-aid in the belly of a baptized child. yawn of kites.

upon waking, my son knows he’s been moved. beside him I am crooked until he bites my arm. he is as heavy as the stomach of the angel that nightly kisses mine. illness has the patience of a shadow but cannot teach my eyes to kneel. time is god’s tenure as the lost tooth of sleep.

I stand in a ruined field and preach longevity to a god that stares through me at the empty highchair of some freckled thing. my age is with me, there, and there to mean how far can I throw my food. if I close my eyes, I can see touch as a mirror that’s been used by my mother to describe sleep.

perhaps I am the thing that overtook me. that in its becoming was able to feel guilty about doing so. what if death is just looking for the one it’s named after. lonely I can almost see my eyes.

I can’t sit
for very long
without wanting
to smoke.

this is the flower
I pick
for my ghost.

punched in our stomachs for remembering the sea, we are in a church that goes to church. it is here that a drop of god’s blood can change paper into plastic and here that bread is the bread and butter of hunger and hunger the oldest child in nothing’s choir. here that I count for a son who cannot count. for a son who sleeps on land on the lamb of his illness. (water is still the smallest toy and our mouths still come

from the same
noise

an angel leaves heaven to touch paper as a circle from my childhood rolls toward an empty jack-in-the-box. I am old enough to be sad and too old to separate deer facts from church facts. my children fall asleep before their hands fall asleep.

–

bathtub

I had
hungry
an idea
for a nest

–

kitchen

handsome
as we were
in the heads
of spoons
was fork
that bent
our love

–

shooting range

food
with memory
to spare

–