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.
my brother
jokes
in the barn
about suicide.
the fuck
would eat snow
if it came
from a cow.
I ask him
does he think
mom will miss
two cigarettes.
she’ll miss one, she’ll miss yours.
I am half his keeper.
in the mind
of baby
unborn
where time
is frozen, where god
pleads
déjà vu,
the formless
mother
of embodied
whims
ghosts
herself
to associations
of gender
that exist
only
like nothing’s
kitten
when dressing the disabled child in front of family
my language
is often
the one
I use
the fireplace is on drugs. get the good rope and tie it around the wrist of the hand I want dead.
–
on a drive I’ve undertaken to see my brother, it comes to me that odd things were being sold. jesus-on-a-stick. the crown of thorns, extra. I close my eyes. I dare the brain. the brain says it’s off to be forgiven.
–
brother has one ugly foot and one beautiful. I have this disorder causes me to fully remember dreams*
*dreams only
–
everything happened in 1985. words don’t mean. numbers mean. tell your gay father he has nothing to do with himself.
–
the wind is asleep. it sleeps outside.
as acne commits my face to a memory of scripture, god worries that man’s silence is a pox upon both the crow and the crow. on good authority, the cyclops is blind in one eye. you were tortured, yes, but nothing stands out. my living hand performs for my dying. imagine my father’s dismay at the realization yours had of having done this autopsy before.
as he prepared to leave my world to the memory of a man addicted to god, my father was stung by a bee. this matters. bees carried the scent of absence. bees spoke to mother. mother was the woman it took two like my father to make. mother swallowed to bruise the body of any dropped thing sounding itself out in a nightmare had by children new to infancy. mother swallowed and called it singing. there will be a god. this matters. perfect, now, the nothing you say.
I am walking up a hill the dark is trying to move. my mother has a way with words. my mother has a baby. reading is a kind of crying. the baby is crying because the baby has lost track of something that possesses nearness. there are two babies. one is always blind and one is blind when it eats. never lose a tooth you can swallow.
when out and about, we bury baby brother’s head in big sister’s chest to keep his acne from strangers. when inside, we rotate setting leftovers in front of our only mirror. my growth spurt happens overnight. I start telling stories of a woman dentist and the family she doesn’t see. baby brother starts to bite. his parents buy a hairbrush and work together to thieve a single paper plate. someone gets too close to the face of god.
