as some things incorrectly have wings, we stamp a chicken into the hood of a cop car. the groundskeeper on break inside the church wonders aloud how much is left of the lord. a boy not part of our boyhood bikes over to us with his feet he’s named individually show and tell. the cop chuckles but straightens out when he sees what I’ve made of my hand. the boy says careful it might stay that way for good.
my father carries a prop wall into a god honest prison scene. my mother is there with chalk. in character, her face washes over her face.
–
I am survived by my medically fragile son. the story of my death is told to me by his future wife.
–
demesne. a word from dream number three.
he built a church
from the nothing
around it.
–
not all
have a disabled child
to write about.
–
he built a church
from the nothing
around it.
I am homeless and thinking in unison. yours is also my, beast. I talk into my hands because I believe they chatter without me. cold, where they go, based on the books I’ve held. our beast can sleep without touching its thoughts.
it occurs to me that my brother’s intermittent addiction to waiting caused him this insight: your real life comes true. it occurs to me he remains a telepath. a telepath whether or not I write as beautifully as he remembers. he sleeps without a pillow claiming it gives his ear nothing to do. he scratches his cheeks and says look at these they are the ribs of a pup I am caged in.
the future of war is war.
my friend approaches the microphone with a grocery bag on his head. I don’t know how this will turn out. not long ago he ran over a fourteen year old girl minutes after she vandalized a stop sign. my friend has lived everyday since and everyday previous with the fact she survived. I phoned his wife recently but she had already left him for what he calls a microcosm. I am hopeful I can love what he’s done with his hair. he sent me this flower for mine.
I wear a blindfold. I look my age. I push an empty wheelchair and with it map the way to your room. I go without. my children rebel. my children rescue their behaviors for later use. I tell my oldest she was my idea of a first thought. I tell her in a dream. I have a disorder in which I add to everything an ‘s’. a second disorder in which I taste chalk when your father eats it. my mother is a two-man show. says for example by god I’m next to jesus. I hold her hat. she looks into it this time and the next longer than the last. the rabbit doesn’t make it. my boys enter a room that’s been moved. my father keeps me young.
my birdcage was a stuffed bear and my bird was a moth. oddly the bird protected my sister from knowing she was molested and oddly its cage promised my brother he would again be gay. oddly only because it was planned. I was more spelled than born and consented often to being sounded out. I carried with me a grey blanket that I held like a curtain when asked. my eyes were peepholes I had to avoid.
Ohio 1976 I was given a word. a helluva word. I went unborn. a word my mother swallowed. a troublesome word. nervosa sans pretext. my father slept until his sleep became self aware. he paced. then gave me his word. stood over me.
Ohio 2013 you vomit on my shadow in an abandoned building outside of which a pregnant woman bikes herself into a garage door and bloodies her nose between sound and horn.
after a spell is cast by one using a pseudonym
we start
somewhere.
kingsoftrain 