kingsoftrain

the cause of this grief escapes me and I worry can tunnel breathe. the snake in your love letter sounds real. it takes my belly to things

that are also

pills
minus the pills
given
by shepherd

I don’t know what she saw
in that jar

but she’s been hours

rubbing
my head
with a balloon…

dad switches out the bag on her head
and slips something in my mouth
while saying
mouse
in the dollhouse

I doze for a moment and see a priest
pretend to fall
from a horse, and a stork

act
as it should

I see myself
a form
forged
by a twin, a reincarnation

that perhaps impressed
my photographer
son

[hunger anomalies]

your son
he has
two brains
that’s great
but we’re looking
for water’s
stomach

~

[starvation names its food]

ask the sickest boy what a pig says to the pink phone of god

leave fingerprints for his hand to find

have words
with echo-

he will die
he will not die
laughing

~

[death has too many mothers]

in me like a sympathy pain

is Christ, her language

a fasting
echo

at a time
unlike this

the father
is all
appetite

the chicken, gone
he points

to its ghost…

–

my mouth
is a church, my clock
a Sunday spider

in a dry
toilet

–

(I’m passionate about my grief)

your shadow

dolled up
in the yard

–

cyborg, minotaur

not once
did I watch
them sleep

body

like some use an alias. fingerprints

manna
for hand.

–

I was dreaming I guess
in the face of brevity

–

of god’s glassrabbit ocean

we peck
in the darkroom
at the wrist
of a fish
our body language
proofing
the baby’s
dream

it’s the day after jesus dies and father is a nightmare. I am the right size to change out his cigarette and I’m good at it. people in handcuffs pray over his legs.

father is a dream. a tree you notice in the dark- mom said that. mom says also that an ant’s heart is everywhere. everywhere in the ant.

jesus wants to be human. my brothers lift his body because my brothers do not yet know that neither will want to put it down. I mean to see them off but am rooted in what the future for a moment believes.

mother is not two people but she does go up and down the stairs as if she’s visiting two museums showing the same coffin. for every other step there’s a step that’s not. if my mouth at night is open, she sleeps outside in the ribs of a tree.

your sister is made of money and silence. has nocturia. death on other planets, oh. we’re just poor.

hand-like, unfixable, the hugger of its neck