house/less 

when my car died all i had
was my mouth. it was summer
& the stars had parking lots to rest in.
i slept there, inside myself.
same pillow i had since fifth grade.
everything smelled like 
the mint gum i bought from the wawa. 
drove around with just my legs.
store windows glowing all night
to keep ghosts away. if you keep moving
it is almost like you're not without.
i would walk the little town 
& look for "for sale" signs in 
front lawns. pretend that i had
a golden goose egg i could barter
for my piece of the hunger. lately
i keep watching apartment & tiny house
tiktoks. they're from realtors & each
is a little empty shrine. i love 
the tiny ones. the compact sinks.
one room with a perfect window.
even they are not
as small as a car or a mouth or a july
when the moon is as thick as it's ever been
in your whole life. sometimes i feel like
i was meant to be a pavement dandelion.
something bright that should have
never stolen my piece of fire. 
i fit a television in my mouth. 
only once. plugged it in. pirated a show
i had wanted to see for years. 
it downloaded slow. always glitched. 
i didn't take my shoes off inside. 
tracked in dirt. wanted to be ready
in case we needed to escape. from what
i am not sure. i like to guess the monthly cost
of the apartments in the videos.
the last one was 7,000 dollar a month. 
tile bathroom. claw foot tub. in my kitchen
this morning i open a jar of fennel seeds
to sleep their sweet licorice singing. 
my old car is parked on the moon
but i still have my mouth. 

our neighbor's lights 

if i am being honest
i miss when the house beside us
was bursting with ghosts.
for a year it was vacant. i saw 
a shadow in the yard eating plums.
sometimes rats would dart
from a hole in the building's siding.
of course we never went inside
but we liked to try to guess 
what kinds of photographs bloomed
in the dark. once, the porch light
flickered on. no one was home
but the ghosts. i came out. turned on
light on too. i thought i smelled
cigarettes. the same family used to own
both of our houses. i can feel the tether
in the earth. some greedy money face guy
bought the house & kicked out the ghosts.
for months they gutted it. bibles
& skeletons & teeth all piled 
in a dumpster. now a family lives there
& they leave too many lights on. 
they have a porch light & a blaring light
& another light that severs the dark
like a machete. on occasion though
they are not home & the dark
swallows the house. the ghosts return. they stand
a ways away in the corn field. 
i invite them into my yard where
we eat plums. they ask, "can we go inside?"
i am never sure if they mean their old house
or my house. you would never let me
bring them in here. i try to explain 
that someone else lives there now.
maybe they understand or maybe 
they do not. the lights return. their cars
coming & going like bees from a hive.
i wave to them sometimes. 
headlight tunneling home. 
our porchlight dark. 

green bean trees

i want you to meet me under
the green bean tree. of course it doesn't
really have green beans but
its shoes look like that. i should know more
names of the plants around here.
a few years ago i tried to start learning 
how to identify trees. i got about
as far as sycamore & shagbark & then
everything started to unravel. 
the allegator bark could be any kind
of diamond puncher. if you meet me there
i'll know you think about the world like i do,
in terms of earrings. i see a good window
& i think, "that could make
a nice earrings." i see a footprint & i think
"how can i wear that from a hole
in my flesh." the tree is getting taller
so that should help you find it too.
i don't want to be cynical but it's been getting
harder & harder. these days i have
to eat sugar straight from the bag 
if i don't want to start crying. my teeth,
like a bad piano. the green bean tree,
lonely as ever. i wonder what he calls himself.
does he know his hands look like
green beans? when we finally meet here
i'm going to offer you one of my hands.
we can chop it off & hope it turns
into a butterfly. not just any old butterfly
but something tropical & grand. everything
around where i'm from is thirty minutes away.
my species. my lovers. the mountain.
that is what a valley is: a place where everyone
is reaching. the sun looks in on us
like the belly of a coin purse. i am not shiny.
neither are you. the parking meters
are having babies. it is wet outside & 
i hope the geese are headed home. 
you do not meet me & that is okay.
i did not give good instructions. you cannot expect
someone to find you when you do not
even know the name of where you are.
once my father got lost without a phone
in maryland. he called from a gas station.
my mom asked, "where are you?" he said,
"i think i am under a green bean tree." 

fire wedding

they say pearls are what emerge
from a horrible crush. i burn my arm
& the scar forms a new continent.
i build us a house there. it is not enough
because it is never enough. the wanting
becomes a roommate & we carry him around
teddy-bear style. on the third floor
of the old woman's house there was a room
with stained glass windows. i thought,
"i just want to keep myself." you ask me
in the spaceship, "why aren't we married?"
i pretend i can't hear you over the sound
of the atmosphere cracking like an egg.
all my jewelry is costume jewelry. spelling
is overrated i just pour an alphabet soup
& i see what sticks. the repetition of 
the "i" & "you." the wedding lacks
invitations. it lacks guests then too, except
for the old man who used to live 
above us & pretended to be a god. 
the need for a witness makes it feel 
like a crime. in some ways it is. i am no longer
going to spend any days not on fire.
no eyelashes. melted teeth. the fire wedding
would have been lovely if it wasn't for
the fire. if it wasn't for us & our
uncertainty. i still feel like pieces of me
need to be panned from a river. we looked 
for gold once as children. in the old woman's 
bathroom she had a hole in the wall for razor blades.
that little sharp forest where we all turn
into ribbons. i want to love. i want to love
you & i don't mind the fire as much
as i probably should. you think i am 
a squirrel but i am a possum. the man claps
when we are done. we are husband & husband 
under the law of a terrifying machine. 
i think about that old woman's house often.
she did not live with her husband. she told me
"i like to keep secrets." 

there are no such thing as writing machines

i walk the story out on a lead to the water
but it will not drink. a story is 
a living thing. has to be told & retold.
has to be placed in the mouths 
of people with good ideas & bad ideas
& hungry ideas & weird ideas. 
my father used to plant bedtime stories.
i would say, "tell me again about the time
you filled the world with turtles."
all of the stories were true. we stretched the sky
like taffy. put our boots on & wrestled 
an ending from between his crooked teeth.
i do not tell enough stories. on the phone
with a past boyfriend he once asked me
to tell him a story. i started with a desert
& did not end up anywhere. he fell asleep
but the desert spilled into my room.
i spent weeks scooping sand out with
my cupped hands. there is no such thing 
as robot writing or a robot story. instead,
there are face-suckers who think a story
is just another vessel to drain. the story is angry.
it puts on its mask & eats a hole through
the sky. i have seen people try to use
writing machines to talk. their stories are
not their stories. they are echoes of a wanting
that the machine cannot find. they need a father
or a terrible boyfriend. the dark is where
all stories come from. i find mine when
i am on all fours & the coyotes are singing.
i walk forever. the story finally drinks. swallows
great greedy gulps. i join it. we are horses
or we are dreadful men. we laugh 
& hope to be retold with more glory. 

hole in the tent

the last time i loved you was on the mountain.
in the dark, we watched the insects swarm our tent. 
mayfly & mosquitoes. they formed a chorus
to sing about us. watched us in our sleeping bags.
the dark out there was thick like cream.
my heart, a pocket watch. i feared all night
what would happen if a hole ruptured 
in the tent's thin skin. you assured me 
that was not possible. it rained the next day
like goats & frogs. the mud laughed at us. 
i wanted you to be someone you were not.
did you crave the same from me? i was lonely
& so were you. sometimes love is just loneliness
given direction. i do not say this to sound cynical 
but just to say that standing in your mouth
was just standing in an old church. stained glass.
the sun in our eyes. the rain made the tent humid.
all i wanted was to walk until my legs left me.
the following night there was a hole in the tent. 
i tried to cover it with my thumb. the bugs found it.
i wept. the rain continued. the bugs entered.
filled our lungs. bit our ears. i rang like 
a struck city. telephone poles in my teeth.
in the dark i crawled to the car. i had told you
i was just going to pee in the woods. 
in the backseat i revealed in security. no wings
just my shrinking face. the thrill, gone. the forest
deepening around us. i wanted us to work. i wanted
a life without skin. i counted my bites like
rosary beads. three around my wrist.
another four on my neck. when i returned
i did the same to you. you had patched the hole
with duct tape. the chorus swarmed it still. 
waited for the threshold to give. in the morning
you made thick instant coffee. i went down
to the edge of the lake. the insects were 
screaming into the dawn. i joined them. 

roman empire

i don't believe in the roman empire. 
if the face-eaters can deny my histories
i can deny theirs too. i do not believe 
in england or their colonies. 
there is no such thing as a volcano.
do you know in pompeii, they didn't
actually call it pompeii? we don't know
the name of their city. we call it pompeii
because some guy saw the word
written in the ruins. i too have been
a word written in the ruins misinterpreted 
as a city. when the ghosts visit
are they lost? do they say to one another,
"there is no such thing as pompeii."
there is no such thing as fish. those are just
our ancestors who did not give up
on the deep gods. there is no such thing
as birds, those are just angels who are
not greedy. who come down. the journey
is so long that they always forget their messages.
forget even that they are angels. 
i often walk into another room in my house
forgetting what i was looking for.
have you ever lived in a city that forgot
its name? i have. a town in the mountains
that stole a dead man & named the soil
after him. we are strange beings as far 
as life goes. i do not believe in a capital g
god which is huge relief. no one should have
to believe there is a man in the sky. 
instead, i see the eyes of the trees. i see 
all mountains as sleeping bears. i do not
believe in death which means i do not 
believe in the united states. of course i see it.
all the fires & the cows & the guns. 
if the wind would have blown a different direction
pompeii would have survived. instead,
hot ash made statues of their bodies. 
in the early days of the covid pandemic,
i also lived in a city of statues. everyone stood still
in new york. ghost streets. empty trains 
running as if the volcano had not
just decided to be real. 

mop water

i want to hear your again stories
until the moon, like a loose tooth,
drops to the ground. i make wishes
on eyelashes. serve dinner to my ghosts.
at the malt shoppe, i was the worst
mopper we had. i rushed. i wanted
so badly to go home. i had school 
the next day. i had no more fingers.
just a neon girlhood in a rear view mirror.
sometimes my boyfriend would 
eat fireworks from my hands. the mop 
smelled sweet. like green legs & summer.
my shoes were sticky from syrup 
& cream. lines out the door. my knees 
popped like bottle caps. everyone was
1950s in a good way & a bad way. 
chili dog & peach cobble topping. 
scrubbing the floor of the day. foot prints.
the streetlamps knocked on the glass.
i preferred to close by myself. 
even if the basement was musty 
& full of fingers. even if the college boys
who lived above liked to catcall me.
i enjoyed it because it made me feel like
i was doing girlhood right. the mop water
soaking through to my socks.
stars, like stoplights. stoplights like fires.
i wanted to go home. i scrubbed. washed.
the water gray & mashed. we poured it out
in the back lot. the dumpster 
held a man without any eyes. 
he waved to me. i waved back.
i know i am wrong to crave a mythical simplicity 
of flesh back then. what i really want is for 
my bones to mean less than they do now. 
to go back to when i touched sugar. 
cleaned the floor of two rooms. turned off
all the lights for the night & stuffed
tips into my back pocket 
without counting them.

shark teeth 

my father has shark teeth
& i'm the only one who knows it.
he sheds them in the bathroom
& i keep a jar of them with the rest
of the fossils. the trilobites & nautilus.
all the river spirits who have long
taken to poetry. once in the river
we found a fern fossil. the prints 
of ancient hands. i tried to resurrect 
the humidity. summer used to be less hot
or else my body was more ready 
for history to spin us. i open my mouth
to find shark teeth too. they look
just like my fathers. if we stop swimming
we die like sharks do. i have seen my father
walking the house in the night. 
a shark waits in the field, star-bathed 
& hungry. his teeth turn into seeds
to grow the world. i lose so many bones.
i begin to wonder if my hunger
is changing or if i'm becoming my father
or if both of us are just becoming
more & more cartilaginous. more prehistoric.
a wave gobbles up the chimney. 
ferns grow where windows should be. 
i saw my father eat a hole through the wall.
he saw me do the same. in some ways
we are mirrors & in other ways
a taxonomy. one of us will have
to grow legs. it is not going to be him.
the shark knocks on the windows at night
with his snout. i open them just a crack
to feed him hunks of meat. tuna & 
salmon. dried squid & chicken dumplings.
it is never enough. i am not sure if he is
my father or if my father is just
the bathroom man with a shadow 
tall enough to cleave the world. 

secondhand moon

sometimes we take the road gill-less
& it just involves a lot of breath-holding.
i always wanted to be a fish but i never quite got there. 
my dad's old jeep used to be able
to drive through rivers. i miss the goodwill
off main street & how i used to be able
to see all my old dresses there waiting 
for lackluster rebirth. once, the moon drowned 
in the sky. i saw it. i tried to lift it out
with no luck. i was panicked. sometimes i am
the only one who realizes a tragedy is unfolding.
i don't waste time alerting the masses.
the news stations are just hubs of propaganda
(& not the good kind). we have to take language
into our own hands. 
i went to the thrift store & i found a replacement.
the moon is duller than before but
it gets the job done. the neighbors are jumping
their car & it sings like a fire alarm. 
i grew up next to a fire station. the trucks passed
at all hours of the night. sometimes they were
the size of toys & the fires ate them like
hoagies. i got used to the different ways
destruction can take place. i sort them
into three categories: capitalism, wild capitalism,
& on occasion, bad luck. i have good luck
bad luck. like, when i slip on the ice
i never die. like, when there is a rough bullet
it is never magic, only punctures a party balloon.
everyone i know is turning thirty. i guess i thought
so much more would have happened. 
i have never left the country. i have never made
another human out of clay & brought him to life.
i guess i have thrifted the moon. i dust it off.
she asks me on cloudy nights, "do you think 
they can tell it's not supposed to be me."
i explain to her that no one is ever paying attention.
that gives her comfort & me grief. 
i see one of my old dresses knocking on windows
as it sulks up & down the street. i try to chase her
but she just gets all car kill & i don't have
any napkins. i go home without her.