tooth fairy gone to salt
shell of a bee in an empty lamb
doll burns its tongue on a teacup breast
at your abuser’s
costume party
my eyes meet in a tunnel beneath the museum of things that belong. sister moons the moon. mother she buries the ironing board of a crucified dentist. childhood starts at the top. the painter of stomachs eats from a footprint. egghead shreds a pillow in the madhouse of snake.
the frog in the hood of my coat
has I’m sure
a later meaning.
my brother is on his back in a field he calls helicopter.
I know my father’s mouth
by its embrace
of doom’s
unconnected
dot. there are sounds
I can’t make. like that of a boy
squealing
as he rubs
a toy tank
under a blanket
for a god
whose mother
a face
could love.
eardrum the airbag stomach of a lonely doll
brain
a blue
parachute
somewhere between satellites and baptisms
grief
the daydreaming
thumb
the image
crucified
for its lack
of focus.
the loud music
over which
you hear
make
your blood.
the weakest
electric chair
this side
of moth.
father’s grip on a rolled-up magazine.
crow laundry.
an out-of-shape
coat hanger. & (and)
the news
that my nakedness
has died.
i.
chew toy
abandoned
at the throne
of old man
scissorlegs
ii.
a claw
from the lottery
of hands
the girl wearing a scuba mask is not on a skateboard. this, after all, is church. I see what you see- the writing suffer. I’ll wash, later, a pair of black socks from the minefields of the one we call birdbeak and you can be the puppet with a needle in its arm.
he cracks the motel room door from inside and pisses from wasp to spider to spared cricket. he can smell the baby’s back as it begins to burn a hole in the pocket of a bag-headed hitchhiker. the earth is 42 years old. a car in the lot below moves over a body and stops. the woman in the car is sucking a tooth through a cigarette. whatever god put in her cake is almost gone.
kingsoftrain 