I stab my father with a carrot so I can say he lives to the pacifist who broke the television we were called to witness. I run after my children because they think they are chasing nothing down the street. god blows two bubbles that become the eyes of a crucified man. the last arm in the world will be a prosthetic arm made for the toddler who will die in the meat of the dying. your father has an apple in one hand and a tomato in the other. everyone is poor. everyone is responsible for how it is portrayed to the bun in the oven. the softness we reserve for women has gone to our teeth.
it’s the same in every model. the cat is first, then the dog, then the baby the cat eats in a dream. while I can’t speak for his cough, I can say my son doesn’t belong to god. my fear of water snakes, though vaguely tied to my father’s shaved belly, began with a bike that was given to my brother with no one on it.
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.
