kingsoftrain

RETURNING

~~~~~

god’s brain in a small hat

–

(rabbit)

–

from surgeries
and gardens

–

a crownless mouth

~~~~

my angel is a scarecrow in a sleeping bag. heaven a movie theater in spain. she walks that way because she is trying to step on her blood. the boy at the gate is lost and must choose either frankenstein’s childhood or a more diverse nostalgia. orphans on earth smell like bread.

~~~~

there are pictures of me sleeping that are responsible for my brother cheating on his diet. apples the shape of going home. sex addicts fighting to direct a musical about the number of people disappearing

to let death
mourn. there is a chair in an open field. a throbbing in the palm of sound’s publisher. a kid under a blanket asking god

when did she know
what perfection
was. a mouth that was a bomb

/ before I had teeth

~~~~

with sound
the second language
of absence, with

mother, bible, bee

(I am trying to memorize missing you

~~~~

god as a girl reading her father’s fanfiction

fixing her mother’s
ghost town
water fountain, then god as a boy

tired, in a dream
~~~~

you think we are the same.
your unlearn, my re-know.

our place wants the person I’m from.

church
of the removed
stitch. what I would bite

to have your mouth.

~~~~

in the history of newborns
not one is named

shelter, and we’ve called

only two
attraction…

my dream priest
dies
in the desert
after making
with death
a movie, no…

the blood’s
search
for brain

~~~~

they took
the body

lamb
stayed with star

~~~~

you can train
a bird
but not
a fish
to care

for a thumb…

fire is the skin of god

~~~~

a father
at peace
with how many times
his hair
has died
is standing
in a museum
before the shell
of a giant
turtle

his infant’s mouth
has gone home
to lose
its shape

he is alone
like any
grocery cart

some
cribs

~~~~

all information
new

your abuser
could’ve joined
the circus
his chewing gum

the age
of your mouth

~~~~

when drinking, I think maybe in a past life I also drank.

sorry, poem. absent
your suicide
hypotheticals

we all
speak silence

~~~~

I never heard my father cough

I must
to say so
be dying

insect is a thing
cannot be
surrounded

the rich have their ghosts and the angels

their seaweed

~~~~

I exist / too / often

(it’s okay)

his father
had a beekeeper’s
wave

the recurring dream of my blood

is loss. dear ma,

your book
how to appear
edible
to a thoughtless
creature…

I don’t know. birth is whose

burned
hand

~~~~

death in its dream home
had a psalmic
memory
to rival
odd-numbered

women. hell was empty

and we wrote

what words
believed

~~~~

is it written or is it said that the word tells you its language?

I built my house around a crying baby.

–

Q: sister spotlight has a brother

A: whose blood is a stop sign

~~~~

long gone are the insects
you forgave

this storm, the whale
of oblivion’s
white feast, this moon

the word
moon

~~~~

childish nicknames for the messiah

these desperate meditations
on the ghost
of a sober
twin

I am not death but enter
like it
the church
of so many
canceled
spelling bees
to ask
whose punishment

for being born
am I

~~~~

father is sitting in that snowplow like he’s seen every baby and mother is mock burying herself as if daring the holy spirit to make a fist

and sister wants to weep
for an eyelid or hear
a helicopter

and the heart has too many ghosts

~~~~

I go places
in my ghost
that are children
when I arrive. they call me

high grass, lord
of the wind’s
blood. most of them

have lost
babies
with dog
names
to birth
or touch, our brief

attractions
to déjà vu

~~~~

the father is a shepherd in a hall of mirrors. the son a man on all fours salvaging a puzzle mothers use to predict snowfall. we have goats but they act like goats that deep down know they’ve been imagined. the daughter is a hallucination color prays to.

the goldfish a marble from the psalm of dry lamb.

~~~~

in this dream, the father stops halfway up the ladder and blows on his hands. starvation is a drowsy snake. the dream has time to think and figures existence needs a distraction. when my son bites himself, it is because his teeth are feeling lost. I offer him to the dream but he is not godless enough to throw his voice. are you sick in a language that has a word for what you have? skin is the longest dream.

~~~~~

he takes baths instead of showers

the boy
who believes
in ghosts

~~~~~

to be unthought of is to be one more person away from pain. no cricket you hear is alone. in my boy’s drawing of jesus, the ears are all wrong. his first sad poem is about an oven. his second calls dust the blood of a seashell. his third is so terrible that I tell my friends I’m just a gravedigger who wants to open a hair salon. my friends they are made of grief and brilliance. they say they like mirrors that have in them, how do I say this?, a lost theft. I sleep and my sister paints my nails. kisses my head. she is no shape and then a shape that occurs to a horse my son thinks will live.