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.
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.
I saw a cigarette with its mouth open. today was hard. hate is amazing.
god will die with his ear on my stomach.
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.
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.
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.
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.
god’s dream
of dying
first
kingsoftrain 