we borrowed clothes
from the body. food
wouldn’t fit
in our mouths
mother claimed
because
the woman knows she isn’t the one her angel wants. god says we can do this all day. I chase the car until it runs out of batteries. mother needs little. an extra night to sleep on the loss.
shake a broom
at the sky
then make
the ocean
watch
–
have a kid
in the next
life
–
to a highly
visible
other
become
attached
–
marry
and ruin
sight
unseen
kidnapped
I come
as advertised
before god
in the spitting
image
of mother.
unharmed
on earth
is a form
I do not
take after.
not for the disabled saint
of benevolent trauma
is there a thin line
between birth and death.
I mow the lawn like I’m trying to avoid a spotlight.
trauma
is an imperfect
inherited
circle
run
around a wheelchair
by a youth
knows
that even the devil
has the first half
of his life.
in a small attic
a boy
on all fours
being weakened
by a spider’s
dream
is putting
an ear
to the roof
of his sister’s
dollhouse. for making
the wrong
sounds
for animals
poor sister
was lowered
into the baby
you were born
to lift
by two
scarecrows
you’d think
were separated
at death
for the way
they don’t
carry on.
it is not uncommon, when placed on its stomach for the first time, for the infant to break a rib.
man creates the world as something to sleep on.
some water is trapped underwater.
seeing my mother
gives me
the swallows.
her sickness is bravery.
she tells the tv
its food
is too close. stillness
that she’s already
eaten.
our house is surrounded by sticks.
it is not god
gives man
something to bundle, bring inside
and break. I can piss
and put soap
on my hands.
be the abuser you want to victimize. repeat your father’s compelled evocations. if fat, absorb your mother’s least favorite hiding place. if not, borrow your brother’s future. plan it around a mirror.
it didn’t take long for the frog to become real to those around me. some would bring it back and pat me on the head and some would laugh when I told them it’d never tried to hop away before. some would say it was the frog that was depressed and some would pray for the frog I was lucky to have. when it began to speak, I told myself that’s just how frogs talk. god came to me sooner than most. mom joked that he must’ve known I had a frog to get back to. my sister maintains to this day she had no intention of eating the frog as she was only trying to impress the snake her eyes were made for. by the time I woke her up, her hunger had ballooned and she leapt at me the odd leap of grief.
kingsoftrain 