your attacker has a history of being baptized. identifies as male. was found hallucinating in a movie theater run by his father. we shot him not knowing he’d already been. his mother says his stutter is an act. she is what we call empty inside. you look like your father.
the people are looking for something that tells them what to show. my father can’t hear the storm for the honey on his knees. at birth, a blown eardrum gives the kid a way out of making friends. a sermon about washing a mountain with a rock takes a word from my mother’s mouth. grief is a good listener.
home sweet brain
activity.
dog door, bible.
a brick
from the wall
of crow.
father, thunderbolt, tongues
for totem.
outing.
the light
under which
I fought.
I am never where I am left. I am in my head where my hair is long. give god nothing to pull and the devil nothing to scrub. these, are my sister’s. and this: I was born to be here for my location. her exact words are covered in body language. her seizures come in twos in the order they were named. ghost reader, passive hypnotist. she wants only what I send in my sleep. her baby to beauty’s audition.
in the oar I broke on my brother’s knee
I found
a human
tooth.
here is a lamb
floating
in the reflection
of a star.
its father tells god how it was briefly haunted by two ghosts that began to see each other. it doesn’t mention by name the who’s who of having babies. by the scar of milk in its belly, god accepts on cruelty the continued presence of the left handed coalition of something in the water. a good mother burns what’s been devoured.
thing is, my eyes are rarely bigger than my stomach. mother says I have a face for makeup. I babysit often. victims, mostly, of tooth on tooth violence. my brother drinks to our father’s medicine. water that’s been walked on.
insomnia
is the stone
I move
from the hand
that forgets it
to the hand
that remembers
nothing.
sleep’s
reactionary
phobia
of loss
comes to me
in a dream.
the distance from you to me
is still
god. to what
your sight
has touched
I appear
visible.
as recalled, my childhood
has very little
on the illness
it took
to process
yours.
my son
has enough
light
for god’s
cheek. in pain
I am over
the moon.
dearest ear,
god is not my fault.
I can hear the worm’s message,
the anthill’s thunder.
revelation comes
once a week
to come out
of its coma. between us,
my rapist belongs to me.
