men laughing
my rotary phone, today, rang. I was eating toast in a closet full of children’s books and there it was trembling beneath a red handkerchief. I dropped my toast and lifted the receiver, keeping it inside the handkerchief. I eat loudly, and it was early; I don’t usually take toast with me into the closet. the children had kept fever all night and my wife had wanted to play the banjo. I too had wanted something else. I said not oddly hello. an old friend did the same and plans were made to meet for lunch. one of us was out of sorts. we were to have a drink. we were to choose. on my way to the bar I threw my coat over a puddle. I like to imagine naked women holding umbrellas, mid-step. sometimes they are wearing heels. other times, mittens. I was halfway thinking of scarves when I reached The Low Joy Bar. it was still on fire and I was furious. I hadn’t seen my friend in so long.
men terrified
the men have gathered with small boys on their backs. each hopes to be, briefly, in the shadow of a plane. the boys can only think with their hands how warm their fathers are. a shoelace or two teases tired the tongue of the devil. wind, the maker of mask, makes many. mothers at home pick blankets from the floor; fold magazines without looking. one of the men swears on the grave of his best hound he once saw a woman parachute naked. most of the men keep her there in that plane.
cooing, it wept
for a day, I followed a sheep. there had been a party at a house next to other houses; I had been there. probably, the sheep wasn’t real. I sent a big wheel down one driveway and it crossed and went up another. it made like it was going to roll back, but didn’t. I kept my eye on the sheep, yard to yard. it seemed no one was home. I stole a red ball; kicked it under a car and it stayed. I was surprised at how much this disappointed me. some doors were open and the sheep would go in the front and out the back. in one of the houses, a piano was briefly played; the sheep came out and the playing stopped. I did not go in any of the houses; either I would push with a finger the handles of lawnmowers and say ‘howdy’ or sit on the edges of dry pools and put my feet in without taking off my shoes. at one point I stepped on a cordless phone that seemed too big and the sheep turned for a moment to look at me; some grass fell from its mouth. my stomach purred, a moving van idled. for my hunger, the sheep made good time. I watched it from the cab of the van; I turned on the heat. those poppy fields in the wizard of oz; that castle. I wondered how many of the houses I’d passed had porn in them. I can tell you today they all did.
my boss has slid to me, has returned, the ziploc bag containing the ant. he says the conversation has gotten away from him and he also says the conversation is over. I want to know how it can be both here and there. he says I can call him an asshole and he says it could be any ant. I say no. that it was any ant before I put this particular ant in the bag. now it’s just this ant. he wants to know if I mean to tell him that this is the only ant. he wants to know what I expect him to believe. I ask him does he know how a ghost erects a person to remember it by. what I call ghost he calls god. I stand up to leave. asshole says don’t stand up and walk out on me. I want to know why I cannot do both. you tell me I am dead. I put it to you that I am not or how else to explain asshole being here. after that you say nothing. it comes to me plush how my little league coach would not let me lead off and I pouted but fell for the phrase deep in the order. how by the sound of the emergency brake being set I would know father to be home and I would backtrack. I pocket the bag and tell my boss I’ve been here this long without being symbolic.
the family went shoeless about the kitchen without touching. shapes were cared for both in and out of oven. the man wore a long generic dress, the woman a hand towel, and the child a past tense that from day one was hypothetical. in each instance of the man getting a hard-on his ankle would show and he’d have to sit in front of the tv and watch a game show his brother had once been on. the man would recall his brother having an episode but not before winning the tv and giving it to the man. the woman would take these interludes to remove the hand towel from its later nap and wake it to the foreground of her pitch. the child would take up again his previous theft of certain shapes and match them to the openings that made of his uncle a mute wince. we gather they may have been the first family to successfully use leeches to housebreak a pet. the first to use canned applause.
i.
in him like the sewing needle of god’s mother; is lightning.
in you a koan.
ii.
now that she wants the surgery removed
they tell her
the womb
is a hook
that looks like a womb.
iii.
everywhere work.
stalks
pitch
the golden blood
of brooms.
iv.
mother in her rocker
her eyes
tire swings
her tongue
a cat’s tail.
v.
fourteen
my sister
martyrs herself
under the monkey
mad
in the stoplight.
vi.
in a church
hangs a coat
with a man
in it.
vii.
does not break loose
like they say
all hell.
i.
all the dogs and the cats conduits of what suicides a sister entertains
films on videocassette and on television
the world’s smallest ghost town
ii.
on a shadow socks match
iii.
with a freakishly long arm she snakes a scared boy from a tree’s precarious limb
senses the neighbors
and puts him back
for Noah
he’s got this look like he doesn’t know how much he’s into them for and the kicker is he’s alone. I’d subtitle him as nervous but it wouldn’t be ample. we’re brothers, 4 years between our bleaker anxieties. he talks with his arms and I see my father at age 32 and my father sees me and winks. brother he knocks the wood table that separates us with both knuckles and tells me he’s gonna need luck in both of these and he shows his open palms. he begins to gag and I jerk but he shows me again his palms. I lean back in my chair and pretend I am in a very small space and pretend I am cigarette smoke. I see the oval in his throat and then an egg and then the egg broken on the table. my brother he loses his cool and bites his palms and futilely tries to set the table afire with matches, some light some don’t, no matter. he tells me he usually catches the egg and telling me calms him. still, it’s some trick and I say it. not a trick, he says, but magic. he drowses right there in front of me and my subtitle is ‘fuck’ because I am scared. we go inside to the dog we’re sitting for and I retire to the guestroom where I check the eggs in my bag to make sure they’ve not broken. I go into the bathroom with one of them and say down the hatch. I spend the night on a hard bed and care for my stomach. my stomach and not the egg.
at this point
means:
river deer
like you’ve never seen.
a soup bowl; empty, aglow.
another’s head
in my hands.
coordination.
energy.
receiving the word
a day late
that energy
has arrived.
marriage, or a single
parent
torn.
perfectly mediocre terror.
a love of statues.
love of placards.
showing my son
the man I’ve chosen
to remember him by.
art not reflective of, or art
sideshow.
knowing the kids of others.
knowing just how many gifts
god had.
that the word overcome
has always been
past tense.
weight gain. weight loss.
detecting
no difference
in weight.
telescope, or the long
thin hat
of god.
i.
to my brother, born deaf, lover of whistles
to my sister, born boy, lover of war
to my father, born second
mother, born first:
dog, stick, shadow, stick.
*
the day
you set aside
to kill yourself
the one day
the mailman
disguises himself
as death-
*
after death, there is nothing.
be playful. trim a tree in the dark.
ii.
your sister she sends me a postcard of a stalled truck. says the state of Georgia makes her by noon a breakfast she cannot finish. her lighter set her back money enough to fill one shoe. then a plastic crow made in China had her hopping in a sack
to a piano. our baby she wishes it ours and she has gifts that need wrapped. she guesses at how old, she guesses wrong. I tell her I had it frozen at seven months then I drop six teeth in an envelope. the teeth they are heavy, my hands light. I did this I tell her two months ago which I imagine will make her sick in the stomach.
*
I am careful with the baby. I walk on my toes often. tell your mother it’s a girl. your father that it’s one of many. two things: this violin is very small. and, I didn’t know you played. tell your father the icicles fall. that I can do nothing. that I spent hours yesterday putting a plastic caveman on a dinosaur, he yelled,
and woke the baby.
I painted
into you
a corner
behind which
I often
have words
any hour
that is late.
because
when mine stopped
your sadness
was still
moving
