kingsoftrain

some poems; former, future, and visited

~

[ pure ]

a father’s brain activity
charts its course.

piano hands
thrum
on the hood
of a junkyard
car.

I am hard to look at
because I thought my head
a burn box.

the sound of a microwave
has a short time
to spend
with the blue
puppy’s
whine.

the theatrics
need a mother.

a mother needs
to populate
or to paint
a factory.

we are less and less particular
about the nowhere we come out of.

mother, factory.

god’s
untouchable
childhood-

~

[ trades ]

a baby appears onstage in a kick drum. the more I think of time travel the more it can do. when I ask about the fresh blood you say I should see the ear muffs. you say they are behind the snowy tv screen we made into a blanket for a dying robot and stared at to avoid the sight of your father the walking anthill. my privates move in my sleep. my privates are outside the governance of worship. you can have me from the waist up. my breasts are alone. the devil shares a history with god. in Ohio I am not a girl chewing the corner of a baseball card.

~

[ church ]

the windows
of my pastor’s
home

I thought them
spotless

his wife brought me lemonade
and washrags

then sat with him
inside

~

[ from the prayer book of uncommon disorders ]

I don’t worry about death, but I do worry
its plural. the deaths

of my son; in this room, in that.

satan, if you’re there-

~

[ extant ]

closed mouth
of a shopkeeper.

his finger
an abandoned
cross

the length
of jesus’ spine.

forgive
the hush
of forgiveness, forgive
the state
of my house.

we open
early
no light
is first.

we single out
the second
sons
to copy

scripture.

the barber
the dentist
good

and absent.

morality
we use it
when two people

or more
run down the street.
we know
it’s a bone
rolls down
the roof

which bone
for years
we disagree.

~

[ hermit wages ]

to a baby’s swing
or to a fine horse
with one
good
ear
or to the weary
haymakers
that are now
my mother’s
unkissable
arms

my father
his head full
of hot soup
but not a minnow
burned
recites
the toy
gospel

as I begin
to take
my intelligence
personally
here among

the floored laundry, the raised unawareness

of the powerless mad

~

[ virtuoso ]

mommy I am stones. I am in the blacktop river. my veins have been used to unpiss cows. like my father after me I don’t want you to be my mother but you are. the men catch me with the fish they’ve eaten. they slap at me beneath a robe to make the robe move. I recognize my photo shopped savior as airbrushed. I blind whole neighborhoods with snowplow models of their choosing. if you receive this it means there is much more you haven’t. there are ashtrays no one makes anymore and tumors we don’t call phone-shaped. I am beautiful in the baby you sing to.
~

[ spirit nerve ]

it grows overnight too big for its bed. in dream it hammers at the nail’s head still hidden in the infant’s palm. when mistaken it is mistaken for the hand it stings with a fastball. it is all man to the boy with a frisbee. on land it has a dog that growls in gentle code at the untouched bowls of dogs underwater. traces of it can be found in the model glue scraped from the space shuttle that depresses your ghost.

~

[ tear gas ]

the creature
that was to carry
in its belly
the lord’s
second
son

could’ve been
the horse
our mother
steered
into a crowd. the creature

that was to kill itself
in our father’s
sleep

could’ve been the giraffe
we knew
as crucifixion.

the creature that was to groom
for our
viewing
pleasure

a stone

could’ve been
the ape
that buried
our dog
in television. the creature

that was
to embody
complete
thought

could’ve been the snake
we bathed
in a bug spray
that would hypnotize
birds.

~

[ hyperactive sons ]

birth mothers
move
the word
of god.

from this point on, I am not dead.

is this
how I sound
saying
to water
that beneath
a rabid
bat
two sisters
share
a leech?

cairn
is to
the father’s
stomach
what melancholy
is
to sorrow. would that one’s

non-existence
could be
again.

~

[ bridge ]

god has gathered the disabled to make his case against reincarnation

–

unable to sleep, I become an alcoholic

–

I prefer
like my father
my insects

noncommittal

–

insomnia is the insect my scar becomes

–

noggin, mouth-hole, skinflick

–

a ghost
when I study
angels

~

[ wolf, wolf, god ]

her plane is in the air. she is showing late signs of believing she’s left an octopus in the oven. the man she is with knows nothing about paper. on the ground, in awe of the bee stings on a sister’s bare back, a brother carries orphanhood to term. everything I touch belongs to the same alarm clock.

~

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