3 Poems from Umbrella Factory

Originally published in Umbrella Factory Magazine, Issue 7

“The Name of the Father” also published in Or Else they are Trees

The Name of the Father

The pond from my memory wrote a name
on a slip of paper and pinned it to a tree
I always pass in the morning.

The name is my father’s and for some reason
it always brings back the memory
of burning my leg on the exhaust
of a tractor. He poured water over me
and the seared flesh rose as if extra limbs
were trying to tear their way out.

This isn’t even my memory.
I don’t know whose it is.

One time I noticed that the ink
on the note had faded completely
and when I turned at the tree,
my skin went one way
and I went the other.

What We Were Trying to Do All Along

Available now in A Collision of Soul in Midair

Composing a Soundtrack

A book containing your heartbeat goes out
without a coat, and comes back shivering
and water-stained.

A man with a birdcage
for a head had sung into the pages 
and pulled at his metal strands like a harp.

Taking this as encouragement,
the heartbeat made a film about
birds with cages as heads.

The camera does pneumonia shakes
and inside the cages are birdcages
with men as heads. And inside them,

well, it is difficult to tell how far this goes.
You came into the book to watch a private screening.
The only things that moved were the names

with bird nests in their letters. In between sound,
your heartbeat clasps your shoulder
and asks what you think.