highway mouth

i start talking to the highway 
when it thickens to elsewhere territory.
empty motels like fisheyes 
in the blueing dark. we discuss
the weather. we muse about the trash 
& the people who come with smashed-plate knees 
to try & clean it up. the highway is sometimes
more cynical than me. we always get
to talking about the future of which
the highway does not believe in.
he is always trying to tell me 
that it is the last day on earth. i am 
by no means an optimist but 
at the very least i try to be curious.
i tell the highway, like a mother,
"the sun might have a video game 
to play tomorrow." i don't think opposites
attract so much as they intrigue one another.
the highway tells me he wants someone
to stay. no overnight. not passing through.
he wants someone to lay down on
his asphalt neck so that he can
feel them when he swallows. so that
no matter who passes through that there
is someone to keep him company.
hours in, he works up the courage to ask
if that might be me. the highway is not
a romantic. he is a rocking chair kind
of body. craves lullabies & shoelaces.
we pass a truck stop where men 
are sitting on the tops of picnic tables
& trying not to kiss each other. 
i leave the highway & his voice turns
into a turn signal's clicked tongue. 
i know one of my jobs in this world is to 
keep the liminal spaces company. i never make
promises. sometimes being a body is enough.
when i was small, i used to ask my mom
to roll down the car window so that
i could converse with the wind. she always agreed
& conjured the voice of the wind for me. 
now when i open the window, the air
talks freely. i love the way there is always
a mouth if a silence comes to eat you. 
i want to take the highway home. make him
a tv dinner. sit on the couch. brush his hair. 

gutter ball

if a mirror asks for your tongue
to keep you safe, it is not a mirror.
the bowling alley smells like feet
& i welcome the reminder 
that we have bodies. a ghost knocks
with his knuckles on the window,
makes a gesture with his head,
& leaves. i am not good at getting what
people mean. i take uneducated guesses.
take wrong turns. i roll my skull & 
it turns up gutter ball after gutter ball.
i am trying to convince my family 
to build a bunker & fill it with sugar.
in the field behind our house there are
periscopes to burp the earth. the landfill 
is watching television while nature
tries to take her shoes back. 
i like the moments when i feel righteous
& think i know what is going to happen
& when. it always changes though.
the door gets closer. a boot hanging from
my mailbox. i start removing my name.
instead, writing, "who?"
the tunnel is not a love tunnel. it is
a place where we are pins. shoulder to shoulder
hoping a horrible man misses. i do not want
to have to cover mirrors wherever i go
but that's where i'm at. a hallway 
going towards a nothing room where
we try to lay low. my partner asks me,
"are you sure you want to be dangerous?"
we are just eating. we are just bowling
in a field of corn. i don't remember
when i became dangerous. i can't aim.
i knock on doors selling girl scout cookies 
to haunted houses. i don't know
where my parents are. we are going 
to have to do this ourselves. 

limited edition flavor

everyone has their own private capitalism
like a daughter in their coffee cup. 
a hand beneath a pillow. the self without 
any lungs. the little hunger that eats the dark.
mine is a gone flavor. something marketed
with shiny teeth & iridescent packages.
mystery flavor the color of cave fish. 
i am a collector of limited editions. cereals
& cookies & boyfriends & door knobs. 
i let them cure like smoked meats.
wait until they're  stale. fists in 
plastic bags. they inspire a frenzy only known
by feet in the rain. all afternoon i go out
to the side of the road & i collect cans & wrappers.
inside each is a talisman. a bone left 
by the devourer. we are all brushing lips
& thumbs. i want the limited editions to stay
forever. to keep me company at the end of the world.
let me shove my hand into a box of heart-shaped
fruit loops. knuckles smelling like dream oranges.
when someone leaves me i make them 
a package to put on a shelf. i shred the cardboard.
i once emailed a manufacturer pleading with them
to not get rid of my favorite cereal. they responded
surprisingly with kindness. they said,
"sometimes we have to take off our gloves 
& weep." i asked if they were a poet & they emailed back,
"we are all poets until we're not." i get down
to the bottom of the box of sweet wheels.
drive the car to the supermarket without you.
call you five times until the phone expires. 
i do not want the only promise to be that
a new brief handful is on the horizon. still, i chase them.
climbing onto the roof. convening with
the conveyor belt gods. a machine with a belly
of sugar. it is never long enough. 
 

beautiful vacuum

 i ask the vacuum for advice it says,
"house wife house wife." i correct the machine.
i explain, "house husband."
i was trying to get it to talk to me
about whether or not i should buy
a new knife. i crave to stab the wall.
just one nice slit. i tell my lover
as he stands over his roasted tilapia,
"i love the way flesh looks when it's cooked."
i see the ruffles. a good skirt. the school bell
promises to change us for the better.
the smell of cooking vacuum. the smell
of burning dust. i get my history from
my father who dances with the vacuum when
no one else is watching. only, an eldest daughter
sees everything. in the shower my parents 
come in the bathroom. we are in fog so it is
okay. they come to tell me, "i don't know
exactly what you are?" i used to think
i came from a cut open vacuum sack. 
along with the pennies & the crushed 
beetle wings. i take pride in lurking around
baseboards & calling operators to connect me
to the nearest gender. the truth is what i want
is a vacuum with a bow on it. something
really domestic. a hose that helps
me trim my face down to a pencil eraser. 
the vacuum is offended by how demanding i am
of its throat. i drink dead leaves. i read
a magazine with ads for weight loss pacts
with the devil. everything is cheap if nothing
is cheap. the vacuum tells me i need to try harder.
my parents cross their arms. a parent-teacher conference
with the vacuum. i'm nervous. i don't remember
what the machine has to say. in bed last night
i told my partner, "i think we should get married," then,
"how do you do that?" i considered a vacuum
officiant. clean up my act. get the dust from
my chin. i walked by the baseball field 
when i lived in the pocket of a pilling- cloth man.
the door on the telephone was sick. 
i worked all night. hands & knees & beautiful vacuum.
the place still was never-- is never-- ready. 

the last person to bed

we get my aunt's old car towed 
& in the process, it turns into an elephant.
she hasn't driven it for almost a decade 
but it still feels like hers. 
neither me or the tow truck man 
have any idea what to do with the creature. 
she wanders off & he pays me anyway.
he says, "some things are best not retold." 
on my block, i pride myself on being
the last person to fall asleep.
lights in each house close like great eyes
in the distance. i sit on the porch,
hungry for july. to be sleeping in the soup
with onion skins & a great bay leaf.
instead it is the quiet spring. lately, i have
been dueling this the house on the ridge.
i can only see the roof from down where i am
in the crease of the hill. the lights stay on
later & later. i wonder if they have 
an elephant too or an aunt or a car
that needs to be taken away. i consider the distance,
a two-minute walk, & how i do not
& will not take it. i do not know their names
or what they're waiting for. i imagine
they are like me, trying to squeeze the quiet 
from the day. drink in the brief hum
only the dark can offer. if i did go up there
i would not ask them to let me be the last to bed.
instead, i would say, "you be the elephant tonight."
sometimes i let them win. shut my last light off
while theirs is still slicing the shadows
like a knife through a black tomato. 
my rooster calls to the moon. hears the neighbors
moving in the moon glow. the earth is muddy
from all the melted snow & all the hurried rain.
i see deer prints at the edge of the yard.
elephant prints too. i wonder if they end up
in the neighbor's yard. if they have an aunt
who has died or maybe an elephant.
all the bones. so much more than you think.
the car gone. the night, carried away. 

the last snow is melting & i don't want to be a salamander yet

the junk mail has been trying
to give me a prophecy. i have never
been good at receiving. instead, i fill
the mailbox with fish. i open a window
& a stray cat climbs in. i say, "just don't tell
mom & dad." i am mom & dad. 
there are still piles of snow despite march's
readiness. in the costco parking lot 
the monster dusty snow pile has streaks
from where children sledded down 
its sides onto the asphalt. i crave an automatic 
kind of morning. i have noticed lately
i have to spend more & more time beneath a rock.
no television. no phone, just the moisture
helping me breathe. i go to a talking place
& everyone is saying, "i am tired." 
i want to run out into the middle of the street
& scream. scream until someone comes out
of their house. until the geese on their way home
circle me. i want someone to ask,
"what is wrong?" so that i can say, "at least
when it was cold the coffin felt real."
now there are flowers. wild onion.
i tell them, "do you know what is happening?"
they say, as if i am the naive one, "yes."
i look at cars for sign that they might be
face catchers. i look at surveillance cameras 
drinking our skin like juice pouches. 
i don't want to be a salamander. i want
to be a brother. i skip seeing my brother
three times in a row. i apologize profusely. 
the text might as well be a parking lot snowball. 
he tells me it is alright. it is not alright.
i am weeping in the valley of creeks. i am 
watching fingernails worth of internet.
burning. burning. a new oil man. 
a dinosaur discovered. a dinosaur, rising again
to finally eat the sun. i promise my brother
i will see him soon. i will see him not too late.
the carpet beetles are awake. i have to feed them.
a yolk replaces the sun. i worry it will
attract flies. they make umbrellas that sing.
i step in the stale snow on a seventy-degree day.
i prefer the cusp to the true relief. 

ball pit

i will be in the ball pit at the very bottom.
do not dig for me. i am trying
to remember how to have a body.
i think i used to know but i might be wrong.
memory is a jump rope place where 
every story folds backwards. 
i sometimes hear
the sound of plastic in the sky.
not like a plastic bag but like the plastic balls
kissing each other on the forehead. 
you hate the texture of plastic. when we 
got together you made me throw out
all the plastic hangers i had. we replaced
them with wood. i did not mind but
a part of me missed my horrible skeletons. 
the way they mirrored whatever i have
for ribs. as a child i saw dinosaurs in the coat hangers.
two-fold, both from the femurs & from 
the oil. there is nothing more jurassic than
a ball pit. i find a fossil. the fossil finds me.
asks how i would like the archeologists
to discover me. i explain, "i would prefer
not to be discovered." the fossils laugh.
the oil laughs. the balls part. someone 
is walking in the sea. i immediately think
it it probably my brother even though i haven't
seen him in weeks. once i sent a paper airplane
out the window & it never came down. 
turned into a 747 & got this with capital. 
it filled with ball pits. it filled with brothers.
your siblings are always in the ball pit too.
that is the rule of matter. you can only
escape yourself as far as a mirror.
the balls are not good at blocking out light.
instead, they make a tragic stained glass.
holy worm. ave maria. if you find me
please don't give me away. i want
to spend the rest of my life here
in the ball pit. i am convinced my softness
rests somewhere here. i move my hands
across the bottom, sifting for it.
when i find it, i am going to hold on
as tight as i can. i am going to hold on
so tight that i become oil. then, i guess
there will be no where for me to run. 

cheese pull

get out the camera i'm about
to be a memory. i have a mouthful
of the old wings. a helicopter
is taking pictures of our teeth
to sell in the weird place. 
the ai is not ai but a man inside
a box inside a box eating french fries 
without any ketchup. he wipes
the grease on his thigh. everything
is dry these days except when 
the climate coin decides it's time
to spill. it has been raining for days
but i still don't have a tongue.
i go looking for it under rocks. 
it slithers away. amphibial part of me.
i make all the promises i can't promise.
i tell the tongue, "we will go to
a real vacation in which i don't weep."
the tongue is right not to trust me.
i am not good at memories in general. 
the making of them or the keeping
of them. my partner will ask,
"what were you saying?" i'll reply,
"i don't know but it tasted orange."
if you eat enough citrus you can 
keep the sun from cooking you. if you
pull the cheese from the mozzarella stick
someone will get hungry & wild &
then they will be there too
jumping rope with the cheese. i am the 
little prize in the happy meal. 
i am the steel wool when the stain
is like a third skin. i come wrapped in
plastic. tear here. tear here. the tongue 
is stuck in the gutter. i fish it out.
i don't bother scolding it anymore.
instead we go into the kitchen
in search of salt. 

sky packing

from you i learned how
to fold the sky like a t-shirt.
how to take nothing with you
when you leave. back then i was
trying to gender so hard. i watched feathers
fall in the alley between our apartment building
& the bed bug place next door. i wore
button-up shirts that left me feeling
like i was always choking on a word. 
in my room, a door opened in the ceiling like
a portal. i fed it hair & the one tooth
i lost & never told anyone about. 
on the night i left the city i took the box cutter
you left on the counter. i was going to leave it too
but i climbed up on the roof & hacked off
a little gill of a pulsing sunset. 
i used it to breathe underwater
for the next years. i am trying my best
to not be a person who misses my phantom genders.
the lives i could be living. i still have the sky.
i put it in my mouth where the tooth
used to be. i call you from the portal door.
feathers still fall only less frequently. i eat them in the field.
the sky gets bigger every year. so much harder
to catch & keep. my lover & i talk about
where we would go & what we would take
if we had to leave suddenly. this country is
eating us. how soon, i don't know. if i could go back
i would refuse to leave. i would have taken
everything. the sky & the clouds all stuffed
into my little volvo with the sputtering engine.
the emptiness that once was the sky 
looking down on the roads & the railways. 
then, when i got where i was going 
i would have called you weeping. maybe i would 
have told you sooner. opened the sky up & let it pour. 

big spider

i am done killing spiders at this point.
i make little pacts. little handshakes. i say,
"i promise not to bite if you don't."
i don't actually mean that. i don't want
to hurt them even if they do bite. 
this is the catholic still in me. there's
a passage the priest talked about once
where jesus says if someone slaps you you
should turn the other cheek & let them
slap you again which is kind of kinky
if you ask me. the spiders are developing
their own internet. the spiders are singing
in their spider language which is as soft
& sturdy as their thread. i asked once
if the spiders would consider making me
a spun dress. they agreed but only if 
i never showed anyone else. secrets are
what bring us together. i have the dress
but of course i cannot show you. when i die
the spiders will take it back. use it to catch
gnats. there will be a feast. my aunt died
today. i think about the spiders in her house.
what they say to one another. i do not miss
her yet because an absence is not a hole
punched in the drywall. it's something
that grows. the tree in her yard that swells
with pears. the tree out front i climbed.
all the spiders there, singing. 
i want to build a house just for 
the spiders. let them metropolis every corner.
rain comes today & the spiders sleep & i wish
i could sleep too. the fire will not start. 
all us, spinning something. a huge spider
arrives in the bathroom. my partner asks
if i'll kill her. he begs me. her legs are thicker
than toothpicks. when he is gone
i whisper to her. i say, "i will keep you safe,
you just cannot be so bold." my heart breaks.
how many times have i been told that?
the spider listens. crawls behind the toilet.
when my partner is asleep i come to check
on her & she is gone.