kingsoftrain

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

–

–

earth

father
breaks his arm
but still
shaves my head

–

hell

is the fingerprint
gone
from the top
of your foot

–

insomniac

whose prophet
shampoos
a bird

–

–

intro

writing is where one goes
to write, it is

(outside of water
not being
blue)

the bluest
place

–

cigarette burn

the shadow
in my arm

–

mirror

the shadow in my arm

(is of
a piece
of glass

–