OHIO DEATHS
~~~~~
every stick I throw
a ghost
of my grandfather’s
wand---
I don’t throw many
it is not a sight
to see
not some cow nudging awake the weakest deer
not pipe tobacco, not smoke, not that spider
from an injured
fog
not a small child
a dog even
trying to use
a spoon
~~~~~
god’s been gone nine months and all this talk he’s done of being stabbed in a dollhouse struggles to fill a baby
(do animals have songs
do they know
to miss
missing (leave the bragging
to grief
~~~~~
handstands and loneliness- what infantile reactions we have to existence. I want to eat
but how will they know there was nothing here (this finger
once a rib in the back of your throat
~~~~~
my son knows his birds by the hands he draws for them. anatomy is perhaps what you make it. grey bruise, blue tongue…
this dream goes nowhere. hell, these chickens
(as if their god was struck by a ghost
~~~~~
this body was never a child
(& birth a spoon
bent to the little
I long
~~~~~
father cuts my hair as something gentle he can do underwater. he's broken the bowl that caught his mother's mouth. we have our mirrors and you your nets. I am the last of his one-eared boys.
~~~~~
his cigarette going bald, father prepares his food while we touch ours. god swims long enough to miss wind. if there are two babies in the same room, they switch cribs but not teeth. god is a time-traveler selling nostalgia. I can never remember which of mother's ears is insect and which is litmus. it's always the second meal
comes from heaven
~~~~~
I want to be loved so badly that I promise your raccoon the sea. dying means:
my boy falls asleep drinking from a toy boat. god has no friends but even better
my mother has one was born
without a birthday. can an angel
do this? says ghost.
(grief is a thing taught to breathe by its stomach
~~~~~
it's dark and all of us are in the wrong stone.
the floor is clean where I learned my shapes.
~~~~~
I cut the pills
sometimes
in advance. (love
that no matter
the day, there are three
god spent
with his son.
~~~~~
(between
online
searches
for tire
swing (mother
sells chalk
to a ghost
~~~~~
I didn’t miss god or think I was ugly. had mud enough
to make
from memory
the scarecrow’s
stomach. I ate my brothers
they ate
me back. any loss
became a hole
in a snake, any needle
a worshiped
feather…
~~~~~
think of wind as a thing that’s mastered its nothingness.
cradle
the unfinished.
yes think, then cradle.
hands shape their own leaving.
~~~~~
I wait in the outhouse to hear the ghost of my brother speak.
time
to him
is grief gets a puppy, spider
a tail
(in the story of the fish
that wanted
to pray
~~~~~
mom says she ain’t had a dream since trying to bring jesus there to hear her poem about the fetus and the bookmark as found in her collection (a warning describes home to a crow
~~~~~
because in an insect, terror has no room to grow. because I can count on a handprint the number of times you thought me from nothing. because my daughter does a somersault and thinks she's pregnant. because god worships the storm for its light touch. because I can't sing. because when I do, my mother knows where I am. because on all-fours I call my blood to bathe me in its blue past. because loss eats its plate. because I brush my teeth over a circle my son will make in dirt. because his ghost mans a ferris wheel he refers to as piggyback. because my father can forgive a shape and I cannot a poem.
~~~~~
I wore
to bed
a dog’s
collar
and in
the dream
broke your leg
on mine
do you remember
being spanked
the ant
on your cheek
lonelier
than a stick
(I think
god
he put
my hand
in a hand
done
with growing (there is
the star I sleep under
the toothache
you
~~~~~
god is the word food spells in my mouth.
you have to be this tall
to be hungry.
(there is a ghost looking for its rock collection)
our absence
unheard of
~~~~~
up at this hour
with my thumb
in my mouth...
older
than mine
your missing
child...
the spider
it's thrown itself on a drop of blood
~~~~~
I'm here, says the soul.
the body will need me
when you're gone.
~~~~~
I find my hands wrapped in yours in a field we call rifle. you're vomiting in a dream and your son is asking
(is a shadow a boat that's been killed
~~~~~
if caught
early,
sickness will erase the body’s memory of dying.
(late,
will make
from god
a trapped
ghost
~~~~~
permission
to report
sightings
of uncommon
roadkill
and
or
to estimate
multiple
longings
~~~~~
you’re getting better but birth is still a joke that grief gets wrong. that luck forgets. dog is too old to look at the animal it younger replaced. care is mostly silent. a cricket in a cake. my tiny saw.
~~~~~
every year
on your birthday
a buzzard
falls
to earth
from the mouth
of a flat
footed god
and gets
(its chance to carry
the owl’s
food
~~~~~
at the very least, I think god could’ve given loss a tail. I take it anyway
my cut of longing-
say keep my daughter from caterpillar and my son from cigarette.
from each other
both
~~~~~
I am seven
maybe eight
and some boys
are counting
the holes
in my shirt
and asking
if I bite
I tell them
what I love
and that I'm studying
the poor (that I can talk
underwater
but it doesn't
help
there is always
a book
that poverty
pretends
to read (a lake
that hates
my shadow
~~~~~
because a ghost can do what time cannot, a father gets over being ugly. I have a sister who rings a bell and you a mother who swallows a whistle. the order of my love is wrist, wrist, neck. my brother thinks he'll be crucified for having two left feet. acts like a dog when it rains.
~~~~~
the clown while cleaning a paintball gun watches a kite as if kite believes there’s a puppet in a cornfield. this is what I mean and don’t mean by loneliness. I learn smoke by combing knots from my mother’s anthill hair and snake by setting a rope on fire. certain diets will bring the baby back. whose blood is this, whose ball
of yarn (were soft things said about losing teeth
~~~~~
today, I will cradle nothingness for a star I'll never see. ask my sorrow what it remembers of yours. soften the mirror
in its yester
place.
~~~~~
the room
listening
for a room
in the home
of god, the soft
chase
given
by toothbrush
to birthmark, the nothing
we want
like children
