I am on the train that will take me to my brother and he is on the train that will bring him to me. he has only just seen the great bird I’ve envisioned since birth. I make myself in his image and use his inside voice to describe the bird. my train arrives early. once off, I put a cigarette in my mouth without lighting it. I pace. a beautiful woman asks me if I have a light and I say sharply no. I apologize to the woman and explain how nervous I am to meet my brother this way. she says she understands. she says she’ll probably see god before she sees her sister. I offer her my cigarette and she takes it with her. my bird is getting smaller and I don’t know who to blame.
for Jake, for Amy, for those who know
in the beginning,
his mother and father
were there
to be
the parents
he’d lost.
his first tooth
anchored
a ghost
within
shouting distance
of the boat
named
for ghost. he amassed
a useless
vocabulary
that nonetheless
included
the word
amidst. when women
and children
waged war
for the men
who’d agreed
on the drug
god
would take, he burned
etymology’s
least favorite
haunt
with a fire
he’d sucked
from a sword…
–
the lives we touch are evil.
go
to a different
hell.
-for Jacob-
when I say there are four of me, I want you to imagine you can board a paper airplane to resume your life elsewhere as a supplier of matches to the triangle of vague nations.
-for Noah-
when I say there are four of me, I want you to fill equally exile and absence with a color you’ve seen twice.
-for JP-
when I say there are four of me, I want you to put my face to a face and imagine two hands shaking beneath a god with six.
have mostly boys and then have one of them need god. stop the spread of suicide by not only creating an angel but by creating an angel that knows to cover its mouth. kiss any person who says it’s your daughter’s height that keeps her from landing the role of jesus. assume you are bait for touch. dedicate yourself to men populations bore. put the male in male slut. ice your knuckles. give death a day here and there with crow. switch crows. the past can’t leave itself alone.
father sends me to school after being won over by what mother calls the artifice of experience. father puts the dirt in my blood. father cares for the doll of my instructor, a woman whose pet writes on the board that we feel neglected. my twin sister puts gently two eggs in a bra she’s saving herself for. I don’t hug. I don’t hug and so prove my father’s rib that I am the tombstone half of tits and tombstone. my boyfriend says I can have any girl I want but he also says his mouth can bob for snowballs. this is my body the teachable moment.
desperation
as in
desperation
in the disappeared
eye
of its least
loyal
member,
witness
as the failure
of god
to preach
to the choir,
and abuse
as a testament
to the animal’s
frequent
submission
to the IQ
of poverty
the girl who cries wolf
cries wolf
to three men
whose sons
are dead
instead of singing me to sleep
mother would put a cigarette
in my mouth
and have me
hold my breath
while she peeled
an orange. my feet
were the first
to go.
to heal her father, she asks me to brush her hair. she promises that when I’m done she’ll not only show me the scab but also remove it so I can see where her batteries go. the knots in her hair are ungodly. she says to leave them. she says she can get any cat to come inside. masturbation is new to me. I almost announce aloud that I must look often like I am trying to get a pair of scissors to eat snow.
my father snaps his shovel stealing snow from our travel-addicted neighbor. his mute sister’s last confession is a first. his doctor brother’s dollhouse is a hospital. television is a byproduct of my mother’s human longing for animals. if my arms were healed, I’d keep the baby from swatting its penis. I call my next trick rabbit sorrow.
kingsoftrain 