prayer
as the horn
the car
carries
into
a tornado. touch
as ventriloquy.
naming
the stillborn
within hail
of the snake
loving
boy
who can psalm
a basketball
to tell god
he swallowed
a thunderstorm
you will need
a seashell
–
I say to the boy
that before
this brain
of his
there were other
brains
the angels
thought
were bugs
–
malnutrition
can close
a wound
–
on the moon, my name is Noah
the babies my father held.
the hell, the world’s
largest.
the parts of the house
that caught fire
in two
moving
vans. the bully
mother poisoned
in the dreamy
media
of religious
thought. the daring
suicide, the doubled
god.
give praise
god’s ashes
are still
collected
the evacuated court of my son’s illness.
the blind man’s
missing
eyelid.
the grief, the broth, the reacquired thrift.
the dispersed body. the hotbeds
of skeletal
trauma.
the dance music as mother’s
chthonian
darling.
the sorrow method. the rhythm.
it is okay that my son’s face goes white. I am using my son for water. some of his blood leaves him to become a rooster. some of his blood hardens in the coffin of his wrist. some of his blood enters an incantatory narrative. some of his blood is the body. some believe the body is drought’s battery. I am big on bodies. you might know my father by his spearheading of the ghost indictments. or by the clock you call love that he called the lifespan of his wife’s pregnant hostage.
the lonely man holds that the mouth is god’s mark. the lonely man announces with a blow dryer my bath bound mother. years ago, I was caught doing two things and was sentenced while both were speaking. nowadays, I hear for my father who listens politely to talk of never let a beast be your eyes.
the child
saint
of separation
anxiety
eats
so little
that when
he
or she
chews
open
mouthed
a ghost
gets
a birthmark
god says
you have the soul
of a tapeworm.
the luck
you’re in
is your father
the kisser
of baseballs.
the sound
in my body
do you think
it’s gone?
