Gender 

avocados change their 
sex every day:
female by day 
male by night.
more avocado trees.
plant them in my hair 
plant them in sidewalk cracks
and the gaps in my teeth.
i want so many avocado trees
to duck under, the fruit
swelling like fat green tears drops,
plopping down on my body,
leaving bruises in the shape
of perfect circles,
polka-dots or bulls-eyes
or third eyes.
i'll tell them it's okay,
that there are humans 
who experience the same 
gender tumbling.
i peel a fruit
put the pit in my mouth 
to suck on 
it's sensual,
big round heavy seed
spit in the dirt.
i'll show the trees my nail polish
i'll show the trees the scars 
where my breasts used to be 
they will understand then
what sex means, 
the pollen all night 
all night
shouting pollen at 
the earth, how dare the pollen 
so yellow 
sticky on my hands.
oh avocado trees 
make a female of me by day 
so that i can make 
fruit like yours,
blooming from my hair 
pump ripe green,
i pluck them to fill
a bowl on the counter
my avocado, 
finger nails 
dig into the tough skin 
soft innards,
muted color texture
god of avocados 
save the pits

the global quieting 

will you help me
re-teach the earth  
how to make sound? 
we watched
it escape through a hole 
in the ozone (like a hole
in a pocket) taking all the noise:
a drain, 
the slow balloon leak, 
bird's voices got
quieter  quieter each day. 
as a child 
you / i would
sit beneath the big pine trees,
straining to hear 
cardinals above,
you signed to me 
"i can hear one, 
i can hear one"
i didn't believe you
but i told you to repeat
the sound back, even your
voice muffled by the thickness 
of the air, your mouth 
open: a beak, reenacting
the sound of the red bird.
for a moment i heard you
i believed in sound again.
i want you to do that for
every clamor / babel
i want to walk you through
the creek so you can speak
to the water. i'll invent
a sound for the wind,
air through my lips, a rush,
high pitched, what 
does high pitched look like?
like bright bleach sun?
like UV protection cream?
of everyone i thought 
you might remember
these things, you 
who had listened so closely
before the sound left,
i half-believe that 
all the noise exists 
in your body, that if 
you bloomed open you would
music box sing. 
if you come back i will
show you, i have practiced
the rain, your favorite,
i make it by flicking
with my tongue 
against the back of 
my teeth. i imagine
you kissing me while 
i do, your mouth 
filling with rain.

Flower Alphabet 

i press my ear 
to the ground to listen 
for landmines; 
voices: orchestra 
& maroon.
there are land mines so 
old that their makers
are in the ground there
with them. 
talking to 
the bodies, 
the explosives mutter
something about steam,
something about iron.
something about
wanting the burst
to be over, the dream
they have each night
of wrong steps, a small
rabbit's foot pressed 
into violin air. 
all the while the dirt
recites the names 
of flowers in 
alphabetical order
starting with 
Aconitum. will
i end up a land mine
or a body? i can't
know that yet
but i can practice.
i dig holes in 
the yard & crawl 
inside, taking 
all the speech 
in. i too learn
the order of the flowers,
i whisper 
African Daisy
Agapanthus
Alchemilla
in hopes that 
i will bypass
becoming a corpse 
or carcass of waiting,
underneath 
the soil i ask
the land mines if
they know how to 
disarm themselves 
& they scream, tongues
as cymbals, smashing
the words of brass
& clarinet, language
as needles in the soil,
the bodies speaking too now, 
pleading for the mines 
to go off already 
& bring more
bodies down to where
the roots clutch 
at us with thin
soft hands. i shake
myself out 
of the earth, spitting
gravel & grasping 
handfuls of grass. 
have they all forgetten
about grass down there?
the loud & watermelon smell
of green. i breathe 
it in & listen 
ear to ground again.
i can't help it,
it can't help it.
i say, 
Aconitum:
common name: monkshood

a love poem 

i want to be 
catfished.

make a person 
for me.
i want 
to bask in the sensation 
of love 
without touch.

give me 
several stock photos

standing on a porch:
dark brown hair, olive skin,
soft malleable features,

a clay body for me
to dig 
my finger nails into.

i want him to 
be a postman, calling me
on his delivery route.
prone to paper cuts,
he wears six band-aides 
on his left hand,
i know this because

i believe him through
the phone call;
his voice so strong
that his body materializes,
for a moment,
in the middle of the room. 

hologram romance.

i'll count the miles between us:
233
writing the number
on every wall in my house.

i want to be catfished
& i want to know 
it's happening, to be
in control of my own

uncontrollable 
& destructive 
& inevitable
desires,   

stripping down to just my skin
& walking in every direction
those 233 miles
until i come to a stream.

"this is his house"
i'll tell myself

thrusting my full
arm under the water
for a real catfish to bite.

forgetting his name, 
i'll give him a new one, 
calling aloud 
six times:
John    George
Paul    Isaac
Matthew Robert 
all of them are now 
his names,

i lug the scales-&-water-catfish 
to a nearby rock, 
pry the creature's
mouth from my arm 
& let it go: 

thrash 
in the creek.

i want to be 
catfished.

opportunity

my battery is low &
it is getting dark

who did the mars rover imagine
in his last moments crossing 

the scabbed ground? the god 
of war lived round & copper 

beneath him. we should pray 
him into heaven like we do

each year for my aunt joan.
15 years ago when he first landed

she was still alive & dyed
her hair the same color as his rocks.

his sphere-attic world
laughing under his feet, she held

the counter to make her way
through the kitchen. i see

myself at 15 walking mars:
a girl in a purple halter dress 

& blue hair, perched
on a precipice looking over 

the relics of a martian sea. 
she draws starfish in the pie-crust

ground before the darkness 
encroaches on all sides. taste

of dying sits in the back of her throat
like chewing aluminum foil.

what angels does she meet?
what other gods did our mars rover know?

building shrines in his machinery,
a solitary worship, his altar of red giants, 

each a candle lit by the bold &
stubborn death of a star. he sings

to himself like i do, like 
my aunt joan did, even as she was dying,

her voice leaving her body
as a ribbon into the ceiling fan,

even farther above the rover hummed.
did he pretend that he had parents?

a normal life? high school years?
a first love far far below?

the 15 year old me up there buckles
& falls like the trunk of a tree.

my aunt took years. her gaze always
drifting farther & farther above our

heads as she forgot us more each day.
did she know the rover somehow?

did they talk? did she tell them
her life stories as they left her.

i know he listened, kept those stories, 
repeated the details to himself for comfort:

a green wave on the jersey beach, 
two white shell-shaped clip-on earrings.

the rover's eyes go dark slowly, 
the thinning of throat, he hears 

the transmission commanders as they call
for him, all his fathers, 

hears Billie Holiday singing 
"I'll be seeing you

In all the old familiar places,"
thinks of everyone else who 

died too young & says to himself 
"what good company i am in."

how tall is

i walk on dark stilts 
in the parking lot, back & forth 
what kind of bird?
my guillotine shadows saunter  
removing the heads of plastic bag ghosts,
slicing parking spaces 
like pound cake. 

the top shelf is not 
all that far away now & 
then i won't have to ask you 
to stretch your talons up
to pull another bird's nest down
by the neck 

each day i add another foot
to my new legs, teach 
myself how to stumble
taller & taller, as high as
the water tower, mouth full
of mouth: 
a water balloon tongue

when the cars scream their horns 
i shout back, dead cranes
calling out with both of 
our beaks, we have
a conversation about 
the sadness of driving 
in new york with the rain spitting
to remind us how unclean 
we still feel

you wouldn't recognize me
so elevation.
head bumped on the hot-faced moon,
is this how tall is a man?

i slow dance the lamps 
in the parking lot, call
them sweet names like "dearest"
& "doll"
each almost as tall
as me

a waltz sound crawls 
on all fours from the grates
so i sway alone, circling 
the carcass of my car 
like a condor, soft
green meat of 
a passenger seat 

i call out again 
to no horn in particular,
it's loon & lonely
out here

add another foot,
steady myself 

at least 
i'm tall now

after 3 days i give up on sleep & give in to everything else

an 8 is a 3 with it's
mouth all closed & i laid
awake thinking of how it feels
to put your thumb on the not-sharp
side of the knife.
i peel myself up, some kind
of rind fruit, my stuff 
all orange & sweet 
cantaloupe or tangerine:
with necks like puckered eyes.
somewhere my mom was snoring
& my dad compared the noise
to a chain saw. it cut holes
in the drywall. 
it gnawed a silhouette 
of everyone, haunting 
a house by nightlights,
dad & his living ghost.
do i talk in my sleep?
i might & if i do it's 
not me but a string 
of previous selves desperate
for a mouth to make
promises with. 
listen to them & write
them down, this 
is where the knife 
comes in again:
cut the language 
into the bed post 
or the wall. no i don't
have a bedpost. i have 
a twin
sized bed & most days 
its size feels coffin like,
i hope they don't bury 
me with you, there's 
not enough room & 
if i'm going to 
be an 8 i'd like to 
have room for decorations.
a bowl for a cave fish,
still hearing her snores
under the earth
i ask someone if it's
just an earth quake.
no answer just the house
crinkling & reptilian,
metal-scaled & shrugging 
off a playground insult
making its way through 
the pipes.
i ask the house 
if it will dig 
the hole for me, 
not too deep, not six feet
i need to be able to crawl
out if i change my mind.
a gust of wind rattles us.
i put my thumb to the back
of a knife, stand there
by the sink just caressing,
ignoring the other side. 
i open my mouth to talk
with both of my mouths:
one to laugh &
one to ask for silence
& sleep. 
 

glitter
-After CA Conrad 

was it this year or the last
when all my blood turned to glitter?
standing at the bathroom sink
i watched quietly the glint
of each reflecting speck 
as it trickled from a nick
in my thumb. i imagined
what i would look like 
with all my skin shed off, 
a crowded constellation 
of a body.
i tell everyone i can find 
that there's no such thing 
as blood, at least not anymore.
does that count as a prophecy?
maybe not. i roll up my pant leg
to show the shimmering scab
on my knee & i say
look i have proof.
most people who pass are 
confused, they quicken 
their step as i add 
you have it too 
you have it too.
i think a lot about how
salt turns a slug inside out
& what ingredient that 
is for humans. i'd like 
to lay down in it, pour 
glitter, gush glitter, 
stain the side walk
with all my glitter for 
someone else to clean up.
an inside out human, would
anyone recognize me or
would a gust of wind work fast to scatter:
colorful ashes, 
metallic hands clapping at light. 
until then i sneak into
the kitchen. dull flicker 
of dusk. a pairing knife. 
a cereal bowl. i make a small
basin of glitter from
an incision in my side,
yes i go biblical but i bet
jesus wasn't full of 
glitter like us.

wolf hunting

"who would want to hunt a wolf?" you ask 

& i say "no one of course."

at night i set a chair by the window

& i recite all the methods for hunting a wolf

like a prayer. 

1) blind: a husk of skin where the hunter crouches. 
the corpse of a leather stone. camouflage everything 
but the eyes. i make one by peeling back the wallpaper
& crawling inside. i wait. 

2) calling: imitating the wolf's howl. i find the sound
deep at the bottom of my throat, a well strangled mouth,
i grow canine teeth just to yank them out. spit the blood.
keep howling. a mouth of amethyst: jagged & bone.

3) fladry: encircling the wolf pack with a long rope,
little red flags tied all around, tongues lapping up
the freezing air, speaking languages of the dirt 
that won't try to learn.

4) luring: the pig. the football waiting for teeth.
tell the wolf, "here in america we play." the pig staring
out the window as well. the wolf will come for the pig
& nothing else. 

5) poisoning: mix in with lard or tallow. a handful 
of once animal. yes, eating gently. this is the best
way to hunt anything, feeding them a cup full 
of fat till they drop. delicious drone death. 

6) trap: then there is the pit, where the earth gives
way beneath us. i build a pit in the front yard, maybe to 
catch wolves or maybe to catch someone else. i'm here 
waiting for the snap of wood. for the rush of plummet.

but i don't hunt wolves.

other people hunt wolves.

i just count the ways they use to hunt wolves.

i love the wolves, in fact some of my family are wolves.

i can still see my father: his long snout sifting

in the brush under the pine tree behind our house.

we should let him. 

i open the front door: wince of the hinge
& i whisper. "i'm sorry wolves, i'm sorry."

the wolves slink in & sit next to me to watch
out the window. i tell them about the trap

& they drool, puddles gushing on the hard wood floor.
they let me pet them. i start the prayer 

over by saying, 
"who would want to hunt a wolf?"

 the phlebotomist's lover

as he puts the rubber band around my forearm 

i explain that i sometimes faint 

when i have my blood drawn & by sometimes i mean 

that once i went with my mom in 8th grade & 
the nurse tried to tell me that she once took 
Jerry Seinfeld's blood & i didn't know who that was.
i felt as if i were crawling, hands & knees
through a tunnel & then i woke up
to the coral green waiting room.

as he puts the rubber band around my forearm

i want to ask him what his lover thinks of this,

if he or she or they know that each day

he takes the cool sharp needle, tells 

boys like me to "talk to him" & to

"tell me something about yourself." 

i imagine telling him that i associate needles
with family. that each time i have my blood drawn
i see all of the standing in the corner 
of the sterile white room & i mean all of them, 
i mean aunts & grandmom & brothers & mom & dad,
all of them watching me let this man plunge
the needle deep into my arm, blood filling his
vials quickly, a quick gush & nothing more.

as he takes the rubber man away from around my forearm

i try to remember what i told him in that moment

& i think i said that i have a little brother who

is 6 years old (which is a lie, he's 10)
& that he misses me while i'm at college which
is also probably a lie because he doesn't 
know me any different, i've always been in school.

as he takes the rubber man away from around my forearm

i want to as him if it's really over

if all we were was an exchange of blood, if 

at night he lays next to his lover & tells 

them about all the bodies he entered,

holding up his fingers to count them,
maybe stopping as he remembers me. maybe
he skips me because what we had was too alive
to have just been 8 vials of blood.
does he keep one & tell no one?