sound’s shy historian, digger
of a hole
for the mouth
forgetting
to signal
I was dead
I thought about death
I died
sleep was the only spotlight my mother could avoid
if you see a wolf, know suicide
has stopped
working
swimming with father, I said jesus is not the best scarecrow
and father said
swim
I still can’t find Ohio in the the bomb-maker’s Ohio
sister
she feels
brilliant
when there is less
of her
to eat, she is often alone
people I’ve never been to
sister has to use her body to care for her body. teacher of dolls. believer in the grenade become star. her blood she is told could ruin her baby’s nose. her thumb is a comma. god’s is a crow.
I am framed by a quiet that exonerates silence
god is the story
is not
the teller
don’t unpack, she says
we will be
eyes
tomorrow puts it out there
it wants
kids
animals have two souls
go
like light
to undress
a birdwatcher with broken hands, I am the cry of my mother’s body. she climbs the tree she was left in and smokes back the years of breathing underwater. whatever you’ve been through, this poem waited for me to survive.
one cannot love the ocean
without asking an orphan
to be
specific.
I tell my words
to use
my poems.
father he quotes
echo. his shadow
a short story
by ghost.
hit your children. my own, I love the way they look
before I don’t. every shadow
leaves its post
have kissed the ear
of a small
boy
they do not
love
whose voice
eats bread
through a mask…
have scored their grief
as inefficient
sadness, and accepted
bowling balls
from three-fingered
men.
kingsoftrain 