the black eye
given
to the moth-catcher’s
most attractive
child…
what a woman predicts
becomes false
subtraction
the plus side
of trauma
her mother’s
babied
past
imagine how long god must’ve been left alone to be named after the first person whose name he said. how hungry the mother to swallow hair. how bored her baby to remember. how small the television that spitballed hell. hidden the horse to keep its church. black the water to transport fish.
the human dream
god’s attempt at a short story
the animal
works
miracles
/ the elephant
in its ruin
takes up
for whale
yeah, it rains here
rains
glue
adult diapers
are fishhook
rare…
/ tell your sister
nothing happened
to mine
what a ghost knows about giving birth
powers on
a mechanical bull
father says there is nothing
like it
in Ohio
this giving
god
to a jack-in-the-box
there is a word my mom makes
from a word
she can’t
/ orbituary
/ brings it all
home
I went through a period of sticking things in my ear. not too far except this one time mom said it sounded human but also like all sound had lost its memory.
being poor is a myth.
myth
a fact
with self
esteem.
a father was running circles around a baby.
on these bikes these boys are beautiful
/ passing men under spell of god, the order
maybe dissolved
of the bent
cigarette
/ I will not miss art
five-thousand fathers
to burn
a fish
but ease, but hunger
a girl putting all her pain in a turtle
or in anything
lifted
from the hood
of her sister’s
coat
/ a firecracker
read
by a bone
a collarless dog fetching a grounded kite
trauma’s original boredom
the search parties
wind and blood
