kingsoftrain

this mannequin
that we now
deliver
to the oral
loneliness
of circles
died
left-handed

could strangle
an owl
cast
perhaps
as a mole
listening
to the belly
of a stopped
deer

a small creature was shot
stumbled
and became
my handwriting.

two of my legs
need god.

the propping up of rootless boys and the past changing only what was. your father the spinner of flea market globes. a bat in the barn with the head of a chicken. your mother returning to god the ghost you painted for death. your son wetting the bed. right of owl, left of crow.

for brother Noah

I think / in a past / life / my sense / of touch / was yours

–

mother / ain’t once / lost / while pregnant / a baseball / in the sun

–

thunder / is lightning’s / empty stomach

a moth attacking the ear of a white horse

[on a family farm
littered
with oar-beaten
scarecrows]

–

baby talk
in a suicide note

–

sign language, mosh pit, 1991

today I was outside
holding my son
and hummed
into his neck
a man
resurrected
to faint

–

childhood
animals
deeply
unhurt

–

this machine can detect silence

this stick
if stones
are gay

it is there
in the way
my father
refolds
a single
grocery bag
for a cyclops
that never
arrives