kingsoftrain

“Probably I’ll die like this,
a long time ago.” – Franz Wright

I will never forget hearing god pronounce your name
to a ghost obsessed with wolves

out there in the dogness

in a home
for animals
that have tried
to undress

she weighs
the child
and the child
the doll

sack race. minotaur.

(the stone)

a before
and after
picture
of absence.

we brought home the wrong dying baby

(i)

I ain’t been talked to in so long my wife’s kid thinks I have amnesia. ain’t been touched since Ohio’s ramshackle symbolism swallowed up some organ donor’s shadow. I went yesterday to a funeral for a woman’s ear. told people what I was wearing was a bedsheet belonged to the man in the moon. told myself I had this microscope could see a ghost and that I’ve only ever lost an empty house. I don’t know how old I am but I know what year I want it to be. before dying I saw it flash how I should have died. low creature. tugboat.

(ii)

father an optometrist inspecting a replica of a totem pole and mother an eel collapsing at the thought of a play performed in a stone.

and there, at the bottom of grief, a cup of dirt with nothing to bury.

(iii)

mother is chewing gum like something fell asleep in my mouth. I say dog for both dog and puppy. pray for things I know will happen. a rooster through a windshield. a dried-up toad in a deep footprint.

(iv)

mother and father give their word that all narrators are orphans. that blood is a short leash. sometimes, a fence. be, they say, the symbol your god remembers you by. tell your brother to act like a chicken. your stickmen to share a toothache.

(v)

I saw a cigarette with its mouth open. today was hard. hate is amazing.

god will die with his ear on my stomach.

(vi)

the darkness has many stomachs and we’ve no one to tell my son he’s lonely.

seller of the disappearing stone, the mouth names everything and is born after eating a blindfold.

(vii)

for desperation, boy puts a bird in a hand puppet. here a finger and there a worm, sadness has no family. oh fetus my moth of many colors. oh mosquito that bit an angel. time with my son

in scenario’s territory.

(viii)

atavism

(god is someone’s calendar

–

valley

(a girl with a marble who answers to overdose

–

pulpit

(rooster ghosted by elevator

–

subculture

(in my years with the poor, I wrote nothing down

–

alpenglow

(the scalp will baby its grief

(ix)

on muscle detail, the clapping boy from the cult of thunder brings a wheelchair to the last rocking horse known to model swimwear for the few dolls that remain married to the same mask. the boy is weak but maybe he puts two words together. like ghost

and exodus. for the second coming of the handcuffed animal.

(x)

the boy picking flowers for my shadow loves no one. everything I touch remembers being my hand. the world has ended, or started early. god’s heartbeat. sound’s watermark.

(xi)

because her son can see the future, she is not yet born. god matters to the discovered.

(xii)

overtook no cigarette. surprised no sleep. keyed the car

of a minor
toymaker.

radar is getting possessive.

(xiii)

for the gone and for the nearly, brother has the same stick.

I call belly
what he calls
eye
what answers

to limb

(xiv)

to speak
it needs gum
from the invisible
purse.

comes with everything. cries like me.

(xv)

she says
three times
the word
brain
to her stomach’s
blue
mirror
and scores
sight’s wardrobe
of rags
in earworm’s
dream

(xvi)

there’s a comb
in my narrative, a goldfish

coming to
in a beheaded
angel

~

food

(i)

how to bathe
a red chameleon
from the childhood
of Moses

(ii)

the boy on my shoulders says my hair is on fire. it is our longest running joke. he laughs so hard my ribs fall asleep in his childless stomach. he takes the cigarette from behind my ear…

his cough is a paintbrush. no father can kill god. the resurrected miss death.

(iii)

books to step on, scarecrows

to kiss.

animal
a thing left speechless.

night
a lost
suitcase.

the apple, the quiet. brother’s

double
nodding off
on library’s
secret
horse.

door songs.

mother, mother, father-

(iv)

it changed me none to see my father rubbing a lamp in a time machine. mother, too, ain’t been different

since.

–

mirror miss your clock.

(v)

I lost three days of my life. four

less
than my father.

I am sad when two people kiss.

I appear to animal
sounds
that my brother
makes. sister

tells me
with a look
that giving
birth
is the same
as naming
your source.

mom likes the way I say
hypochondriac

after every
meal.

(vi)

a fish looking for its graveyard

I was in the dream
I was writing
down

(vii)

the audition calls for a woman to pretend she’s missing her right ear. a day before I’m scheduled, I wear heels and have my boyfriend mangle my left. a day after, I’m holding the baby of those who’ve never underestimated their power to look away. I don’t get the part. and mom turns it down.

(viii)

I can’t write and write at the same time. there are drugs in my father’s shoe and bread crumbs in my sock. sister can sing but says church gives her two left knees. mother squeezes the hand I feel sorry for. ah, sorrow- no bird walks on water and your babies

are all
neck.

(ix)

I’m sorry you have to see this. if I could starve invisibly, I would. my son’s surgeon worships ventriloquy. do you dream of the sleep you’ve already gotten? or of a thing so sad it gives birth? my abuser talks as if one can lose track of a mouth. in god’s favorite book, my ghost gets a hobby.

(x)

my stories go nowhere.

god
and his tree
of hunger

(xi)

the evil was mine, the face wasn’t. some were delivered by one who wore a monster mask.

the smallest mouth guard. viruses

transmitted
by dream

(xii)

keep the baby

eats
during thunderstorms

(xiii)

while pacing the hallway of a floor that elevators skip, an amateur eulogist pictures an error-prone barber in a bath of milk who gave as a gift a rocking horse with a bad stomach to a child healing a cobweb for a starless bear.

a barber
in a swim cap

combing
the dream

for a surgeon’s
toothpick

I will never know a ghost story

god does not

after seeing the girl I have a crush on sign my friend’s arm cast, I spend the weekend jumping out of a tree, trying to land on my left, in the backyard of the last person who knew to hide the head of god. I break nothing but the blood from my nose could fill a football. vandalism starts in the face. it’s dark. I treat my mouth like a scratch.

while pacing the hallway of a floor that elevators skip, an amateur eulogist pictures an error-prone barber in a bath of milk who gave as a gift a rocking horse with a bad stomach to a child healing a cobweb for a starless bear.

fog overtakes toad
& boys
are born.

ghost yoga. crucifixion.

train is a tunnel
train’s never
seen.

two dead crows- I’m shoeless again.

father paints an abstract jesus. my sister bites at the shoulder strap of her bra. my brothers

to keep from crumbling
are sharing
bread.

–

I draw a violinist. a dog

at the neck of its owner.

–

in our imaginings
gutted baseballs

became

the skulls of small animals
through which
the wind

called heads.

–

in heaven’s garage
they’ve yet
to make
a horn
that works.

the kids have gone two or three years now without being raised.

the match
unlit
by your tooth
is paradise.

–

a refrigerator rocks in a junkyard.

either the door has jammed, or she

is pregnant.

–

a cement wall
scraped
in passing
by one
with a stick
is the love
we have
for father

–

depression is a dog whistle. I miss dinner sounding it out.

–

(when a scar of thunder / outs itself / I am blue)

or bluish

(like a sock in a blue
coat’s
pocket)

–

it is cruel to hang anything above a baby’s crib

–

I can only guess
I was happy
in the womb
with how
my mother
looked

–

the bunk
above mine
I call
deathbed

is

my brother’s-

he has
his own
way
of thinking

showerhead
is spotlight

–

here is a test: circle
the parts
of a circle

(a sameness)

in the parrots
we care for…

our suicides
fight
for position

–

in the apple
air
of hem
and haw
a pacing
uncle
blank
as a broom
regards
the lovemaking
half
of a doorknob

or

two men
carry a ladder
past a cemetery

one thought
between them

–

this nonfiction
not
what you’d
imagined

–

mother an artifact of paranoia

–

paper
scissors
milk

–

blacktop
pools
at the neck

of a crow.

half eaten
children
limp
home.

an umbrella. a bra. a harp.

a street we call satan.

–

water, make your fist. hold your breath
in a single
fish.

–

delirious
when the lights
went out
mother
would pull cocoons
from the oven
tell us
to stop
kicking

–

it was a very strong soap
she’d use

a soap that squealed
against

the skin

her heart
a hiccup’s
echo

her eyesight the sound of a drill

her eyes
two holes
in a turtle’s
shell

her eyes for seeing

the food in her mouth

–

the sobbing ventriloquist was my idea. mother and father they were taking turns moving shampoo through my hair as I hummed. doom was a color. a mare kneeling on a bed of maroon straw. miles off, an ambulance driver entered a silent film and tried to buy a garage door opener.

–

children from abusive studio apartments inherit warehouse jobs from problem immigrants. a bruise of urine darkens the front of your jeans. I am mugged in your dream and mugged in mine and mugged by a woman in both. for now, this field. my gestural father holding a broom for what he calls the welcome mat

of exodus. in memory alone I am alone.

–

under crow
and flat
on my back
in the loft
of my uncle’s
barn
my shadow
is still
she
who upright
confessed
so loudly
that her heart
flew
into a quiet
sky
as she
collapsed

–

on television
the world’s smallest ghost town. on a shadow

socks match

–

no longer graveyards, I tend what is everywhere resting. I crawl like a toothache, long with her death. the voices move from head to mouth.

a squirrel on fire. an act of god.

I don’t think seeing such things is enough to put

vague
& crow
into one bed. she is asleep

or fingered
by a man
with seven.

–

in a country store
a barefoot girl
walks on her heels-

long stride and baby.

the store’s owner
happily shelves
popcorn, gauze

the thought of his father
doing nothing.

–

beating my clothes
with me
in them
mother
irons
a man
from the moon

(who giggles in us poorly)

for love

–

if my father admits in his bed that some mice are alive when he bends
to the earth
a cornstalk
and lets
fly,

I have to find the mouse
that means
other mice.

–

wish I could dream away the bad mornings spent cheating on her sadness

–

illness, assault.

presence
a blank
petition

–

in the end my mother was mostly an ocean dipped into by lightning.

a mother whose hands were broken by recent events. events that evoke transcription.

–

assault:

maid
loses cart
to stairwell

–

illness:

a birthmark, a scar, and a tattoo

eating under
a blanket