kingsoftrain

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.

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

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

the sea
its oldest
orphanage
the angel
of a butterfly
from hell’s
first council
of sleep
watches
as we kiss
on the hand
our hunger
ate

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

fast

reader, the mother-

pink
illness
through a grey
pig

(the belly button
an ash
tray
for angel

long gone are the insects
you forgave

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

the word
moon