waiting for dad to burn off. for mom
to send
in my direction
a phrase
not unlike
keep on
keeping
your ghost
warm. for brother’s
baby
brother
and
for dog. for the hand
museum
to open.
for the asker
of this:
who would want
two hours
of a life
back?
decay
is a form
of waiting.
don’t talk to babies. write. write to be the first one there. the frostbitten woman sucking her thumb has all her teeth. walk once a week into the wrong bathroom. worry. bump around the house at night, noisemaker. a depressed elephant in a walrus graveyard. pull. pull from your habit forming past. be the bomb god’s yet to wear. surround with others the baseball bat signed by the last woman to mourn sleeping beauty. open your mouth then look at your son. call it photography. if spotted, be a monster.
I was your mother. on television, one could see what other televisions were watching. I tried to tell your father you wanted a bird stuck in a frog’s body. that a sleepy afternoon is the poor man’s insomnia. he hated that I wrote down your thoughts on thoughts. by the time you get them back, you’re someone else.
for Noah
I can’t tell my brother how his amnesia has given him a second chance at life. his kid is a real shit. so’s mine. still, there’s not enough here for it to have all been a dream.
the voided twin
created for duplication
trying to eat alone
our food
tastes
the same
its touching
backstory
still intact
to the rabbit
he can’t bring himself
to shoot
in the foot
the boy
with a sore thumb
whose mother
wrote the book
on book
burnings, whose father
baptized
a scarecrow
as scarce
crow
whispers
in hindsight
of course
the omens
are coming
a disabled
child
and the chance
to destroy
my body
my mother speaks
to those
I silence
in tongues. confesses
she is not
an animal
person. when drunk, she knows
to push
to the right
the stroke
ravaged
newborn. as a word
barren
is a man’s
word. as a thought
it’s a keeper. if one asks
where one
beats a dog
I answer
in front of children. it’s the question
leaves a mark
on the heart.
from Misreckon (poems, barton smock, Dec 2014)
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/misreckon/paperback/product-21954246.html
banshee
the baby’s appetite for its birth is jaw-dropping. in store for god, we have nothing in the house.
respite
history is a timeline of appetite. I have rubber bands at the ready for when my mother yawns. I cover my baby brother like a grenade. he was born without the potential for further muscle tone. father calls what I do context. I appear like a bruise into a delayed game of hot potato. my sister’s hands are an oven mitt’s dream. I know you’re a hitchhiker and your girlfriend a cannibal but here we suck our thumbs.
nature shots for baby
mother’s inhaler is what you called the mirror mother held to size her mouth. I was in her purse when she was taken. I don’t know how it is I know things. bones in the stomach of god.
readings
we came here
to create
the devil
the bogeyman
beat us
to.
despair.
despair is the wine
we age
imagery
with.
my boy
body
was at
the high
end
of the seesaw
when my brother
was shot.
as a date of death
might differ
from the date
pronounced
my mother
starred
in rumors.
hill hours
the clock in my brother’s room
has a visitor
in the form
of a tattoo
artist
who believes
sleep
is a brand
of insomnia.
my brother is here
because he swallowed
an ant
with his heart.
he wants a doctor
with snow
on her knees.
the words have left me. as for shaken baby
syndrome, you gave
that shit
to yourself.
wild goose, reappear
is what I would say
to the wild goose.
the last copy of mama’s
sacerdotal
memoir
the copy
that makes
sense.
