olive oil

my great grandmother feeds me spoonfuls
from where she rests as a hugeness.
the ghosts become larger before
they shrink to the size of strawberries.
little bells rung only when you wander
too far from the blood zoo. 
i have been told there are too many
& not enough geese. when i say "light as 
a feather" i mean this is how we walk
with the dead. careful not to ask too many questions
or else the haunting might become
our sleep lily. i have never known enough
about where i come from. instead i am
the walking chair. here are the limbs.
here is the island. the jump rope without jumpers.
in a dream we are all running from 
dinosaurs. only, one is a man in the family
& we all have to pretend we love him.
the thing about olive oil is that it is
both gold & green. my great grandmother loved
to use it for everything. floated in a glass of water
for divination. rubbed on the back of a fish
to bring it back to life. 
an olive tree grows sometimes in the yard.
no one else can see it & it speaks 
in riddles that lead nowhere.
"who is red & also translucent?"
"what is a hand without a bird?" in the end
i just eat what i can. put my tongue out
when she asks. let the olive oil turn me
into a chicken heart. a strawberry.
the open window where we let 
the dead in. they crack their knuckles.
play cards with moth corpses. 
i lock the door some nights 
then hear them scratching 
like stray cats. "go home," i say.
"you are our home," they whisper.