it is snowing the first time my daughter drives alone. Ohio is cruel. stillbirth, old four-eyes. you want them to like you. the insects you save.
the mother of your hand is smashing spiders with her wrist. we have a high-chair for every creature that eats its own hair. the twins in the attic have switched diapers. skeptics. voices heard by the ghost of my stomach.
[notes from life under bell (i)]
on video my cousin is singing a song she’s learned by heart. she’s maybe four. I don’t know where to begin. this pond behind her, perhaps? that in my memory is the size of a fire pit. or maybe, here, in the darkening sameness of those sentences strung together by cows. or years from now, even, with the word no and her sister’s lookalike being assaulted by an only child in a library of fragile non-fiction. my cousin is singing a song she’s learned by heart. she’s five. a careful six. sound’s fossil. no city half-imagined. no insect obsessed with privacy. time matters to the frog we catch.
[notes from life under bell (ii)]
there are days he is the son of muscle memory and funny bone. days his hands are gloves from a small god. poor god, he says, and grows. days he can carry a circle to any clock in the town of hours. days his past can be heard by his siblings- you’re beautiful the way you are. days his blood pushes a bread crumb through his thigh. days his scar is a raft for ear number three. nights his brain / the separation of church and church.
[notes from life under bell (iii)]
violence is a dreamer. a boy on a stopped bus is dared to eat a worm. it feels authentic. alas, there is no worm. the devil knows to stay pregnant. word spreads about the girl without a tongue. cricket lover. and then, bulimic, when she won’t sneeze.
sleep, kid. give grief its carrot. I’ll be right beside you, awake, wearing one sock. I stepped on a man today. for context.
age I’m at
I go
from bath
to funeral
to bath-
puppet
that made
a fist
its gaze
a eulogy
for distance
the animal
is mostly
pity
I practice sleep, the responsible
silence
–
echo and ear
make
in their many
mirrors
a minor
error
–
anonymouse, common spelling
–
I have nothing
and I have
nothing
on the mailman’s
story
of the burning
stork
–
my son
shares a brain
with his brain
I don’t speak
to those
I tell
on a stage
in a beaten
field
a man
new to walking
is opening
with his hands
the belly
of a shark
that’s eaten
by word of mouth
a local
priest
whose fingernails
miss teeth
like an angel
kingsoftrain 