no
was my son’s
seventh
word.
I had asked
permission
to record
what I grandly
thought
to be
the rhetoric
of the nude.
my weirdo daughter
had grown by then
to say
nearby
that heaven
is the distance
to heaven, and god
uses
too many
birds.
no ear
nor entry
in the diary
of my mouth
ached.
for Brian Dawson
god
to me
was any
word
my father
didn’t
know.
profess
to know.
the last time my father sees me, I’m trying to resurrect the girlfriend I hid him from who made me believe I could do anything as well as a man. who kept a memoir of how she came to own certain dictionaries. who ordered pizza and had it delivered to a house on fire.
to him, these meals
are small
fictions. there is
however
some truth
to his mother
the weigher
of light.
uncle has been all day figuring the teeth of his that will never touch. he has this riddle he calls code for what to get the man who has nothing. if I can get him to stop biting his wrists I might be able to chalk something won’t need moved. when I was born, I was small enough to fit in most mouths. uncle is not the tiniest bit mad. he holds babies only when they are hungry and he is not. those with angels think those without are selfish.
the crow
in each
of its two
dreams
had
an arm.
father said
be
on the lookout
son
for the receiver
of an old
phone. to this day
I ask god
because mom
won’t
how sad
can one person
be?
our mother
was not one
to make sounds
above an infant
in another’s
house, no, our mother
our shepherdess
mother
would have us flock
to god’s
epizootic
nostalgias
because there is more than one city, my brother falls asleep in the back of a taxi he’s pretending is an ambulance. my sister remains close to father but not closer than he is to the mouth he used on the woman who reached me before I could get the neighbor girl to eat a rock for cussing at the egg she’d given my baby’s name. it’s turned up again, the dog whistle I buried. my brother likes to say he is no later than the man his dying adores. I still show faith my signature move.
I was born
impossibly born
addicted
to the sound
of footsteps.
god
loves the woman
who makes the bed
of his last
believer.
after we roll the dead dog from its towel and into god’s mouth
we take
for its tooth
a fly’s
grave.
satan’s kid continues to play chicken with a farm machine
in a slow
not still
life.
kingsoftrain 