a bowl of soup bleeds to death
in the eatery
of my praying
hands
and what would you have me imagine? a change of tense in a tale of abuse. a baby licking the palm of a doll. a spoon. a robot’s broken arm. a chalk outline of a worm. hunger’s tacklebox. our allergic sister’s suicide note. a calf eating its first canary.
a mongrel circles the stump of a tree. a spider from the angel’s dream goes on to spin a caterpillar. mom slips in and out of pregnancy. it’s my first time hearing a groundhog hate itself. you won’t crawl to anyone you haven’t seen swim.
I babysat for children whose mothers didn’t want to come downstairs. I was driven home by men so drunk they knew my house like a muscle. the children ate what I made. I taught boys how to fake an illness and girls how to ask for pets. I could change a diaper and smoke at the same time but then it got away.
circa 2008, revised but not revived:
~
[ghosts]
we think her a fool
god’s wife-
she brings
to her neck
the neck
of a soldier
while kissing
the unscented
wrist
of her son.
the shadows men believe
we are
we take
as lovers.
~
[care] for Timothy
when you are
visibly
healthy
I will sit blindfolded
beneath a tin roof
and wait for rain
that I might know
what you hear
in your drifting
basket
about which
pluck
the lips
of those
fish
I thought
I had come
to feed
~
[an exaltation]
town, not only
small. nor full
a pack
of ribless
dogs. cigarettes
half sucked
some hand
passing through
an old web
in a field
with a tree
where a tree
hunches
over husk
of beehive
like a long fingered
priest
at the orb
of his crotch.
~
[remote]
dogs, here, they parrot
the passing
sirens. and trucks
pull nightly
away.
~
[the yield]
he pick up a stick. raised it
ragged tongue
of creek. licked himself
with it
thin. he’d been
not a meaner day
awake, not since
father
had booted
his bottom teeth
for saying
pussy
into the roof
of his mouth.
right now
someone say
lord. look them
let go
kites
the girls
like they knees
don’t work
without them.
~
[sober hosanna]
on my way to a rose, I passed your father.
he was brushing a moth
from the ageless fly
of his eye. his body
he said
had been called
by a bell.
claimed
he’d counted
ever hill
in the midwest. his bike
he’d pushed up
all three. in the late field
your father
did not ask.
I told him you were.
I burn
sticks
for dreaming
dogs
/ forgiveness
you empty
crow
mother, mine, in the footage god used to justify creation.
swallow the egg before it explodes.
the hole we’re in has disappeared. we sleep on the gospel of baby mudlung. I pray mostly for people to get hurt. I don’t have a brother. he’s all alone. sister will smoke anything. a worm from the vacuum, the lice from nostalgia. I have a tv in my room that wants to play piano. I have a toy car and a turtle. it takes forever.
