when i was a cam grl

we all have boys in our mouths
telling us exactly how
they wanted to be eaten.
hunger can turn you
inside out like
a salted slug. how do you learn
what you want versus what
they tell you that you want
versus the craving for licorice?
the way violets would grow 
on the ceiling when i was live.
live fishhook bound worms. live
like a wire burrowed in the wall.
sometimes a man would stay
for hours. i would wish
we were in my  bedroom
with each other so that i could
find a string on his fraying lips
& pull until he was nothing.
a coin is like a seed. 
come back to me. everything i learned
i learned from sirens.
the ships that crashed into 
my thighs. i never loved 
being a girl but there were moments
i could convince myself
that it was a pleasure 
to decide what kind of feast
i would be. i had to pull weeds
from the floor. from my bed.
from the ceiling. they grew wild
& angry. if the night was good
i would put on clothes
& go out to target after. 
walk like a bow & arrow. 
string drawn back. aiming at
pupils like bullseyes. 
"there is a cost to look," i would
want to tell strangers. then, of course,
there is a cost to being
looked at. sometimes though
i was a just my feet. it was wonderful
to walk as if there was not
a whole body following along.
drinking a root beer 
in the parking lot. wondering
if the men were thinking of me still
an hour after the live ended.
i hoped they were. i hoped
they were left as hungry as me. 

amateur 

there is a video of us as balloons.
necks tied in a knot. i tell you,
"give me some of your air."
on the television plays the jupiter version of
our lives. the one for photographs
& open mouths. then, in the basement
there is a cassette tape where the real
blood comes from. haven't you ever
taken a picture with the hope that
you would be able to replicate the moment
a thousand times? the stop motion prophecy.
i bend my around into a knot.
you kiss me like a trough of water.
we used to put the window in between
our teeth. the window looked at
the other building brick wall to brick wall.
face to face. the alley, a little flute.
in this video i ask you, "am i an apricot?"
you laugh & say i am not.
on a computer a god watches us
& tries to forget his hungry. tries
to turn it into a needle. the good times
are always a place of worship. 
if you look on the underside of my tongue
you will see the tally marks 
of nights i tried to turn into a cockroach.
scurried to the bathroom & thought,
"what the hell am i going to do?"
the phone still recording. the future
bedrooms like colonies of eyes 
waiting to feast on what my skin 
could say if i just kept going. 
it always ends with you letting go.
i never let go. untangled, you go
towards the clouds. a red balloon.
people will squint to stare up at you
& think, "whose birthday is it?"
or, "she must have it so good." 

in the dungeon with my mom

i take my mom to the old jail house.
i am trying to tell her i'm dead.
instead, we walk from room to room
& listen to the tour guide explain
that once this structure was a face.
people sat on teeth. men were hung
in the throat. the fence was made high
so no one could find out what
the outside world was crying about.
two-way mirrors. a juke box without
any music. the warden lived above
the cells. his house has curtains 
& smells like eyelashes. my mother 
& i have bad knees. we want to sit
but there is no where to sit. it is covid times
which is to say, it is when people
briefly worried about whether or not
they killed one another. we wore masks.
the face did or did not have eyes.
my mother hesitated before following
the tour guide
into the dungeon. there are no metaphors
to describe where the sun goes 
to molt. stone walls. choking words. 
i almost tell her. i almost say,
"your child has moved on & is now
just a collection of birds trying to do
the work of a child." instead, i hold
onto the hem of her shirt
as if i am a child. as if the darkness
is a burst pupil. the tour guide explains
how blood flowed down into the dungeon.
how, here, the ghosts nested
& ate what they could. knuckles 
& salamanders & spiders. 
briefly, the tour guide turned off
the light. the deepest dark
i've ever seen. i loved it. i imagined
spending the rest of my life
in that shadow. knowing one another
only by touch & question,
"is that you?" this is what 
my mother asks, "is that you?" 

two-way mirror

i took a knife to my tongue
& split it down the middle.
let one side turn into a snake.
i whispered, "go somewhere to tell the truth."
it is hard to speak with half a tongue.
who is watching & who is being watched.
to explain my selfhood is to ask,
"do you have a sock puppet theater?"
i make my hand talk for me
& it says, "keep your head under the veil."
when i first learned the term "fawn response"
i though of the forest where i would go
to whittle limbs off myself.
i would tell a boy without eyes,
"take this" & "take this." he called me,
"farmer's market." used my ribs as fresh moons.
have you ever tried to say what you mean
& felt the words each fall as rats?
scurrying away, i plead with them,
"i need you." they are too hungry. 
they do not need me. i watch myself
through the two-way mirror. she is 
trying anything she can to remove
what's left of her tongue. thinks of
the silent monks & wonders if
all their words are flowing into the ground water.
the well where i sometimes go
to find a ready supply of spiders
to pray to. what would you do 
if no one at all was watching? i think 
i would scream & then i would turn
into a lady bug & eat a hole through
the walls of my childhood home.
then, finally, return to the snake.
ask her, "what have you wanted to say?" 
kneeling down & putting my hear
to her mouth, waiting for a homily.
instead, she will bite as if to remind me,
"if it is too late. it is not the truth." 

upon learning presidents of the united states travel with bags of their blood type at all times

don't tell me you are afraid. don't tell me 
we have buried our kings in the ocean. 
outside my apartment 
an angel was drive-by shot.
turned into a flock of mice.
they put a chalk halo around his body.
for weeks it remained until the first
summer downpour said, "you are emptied."
a ghost does not need blood. 
i do not live in a country.
there is no such thing. instead, i live
inside a series of broken promises.
the promises we make to the soil.
to our bodies. to the signs that mark 
state lines. i play jump rope with 
a dead boy. he says his blood lives
in the asphalt. he says when the weeds grow
they know his language. flourish
when his favorite song plays from the window
of a car going way too fast. 
i do not want my blood 
to ever go inside a man who puppets an empire
or else an empire who puppets a man.  
feed me to the spirits if you must.
let the tree drink me. draw a halo.
give the boy my river. let him walk again
with his hands in his pocket
& his mouth full of rain. 

how to breathe

i am sorry. i can only tell you
what i've done to breathe.
this will not work for everyone. 
i knit gills from the stray threads
of my mother's knitting.
one follicle at a time. blue & purple
& speckled brown. all the while
trying to fill my lungs with coins.
what will you take with you
when you turn back to the water?
this is how i think of memory:
the fish in me that craves the deepest
depth the ocean can offer. cave or chasm
or trench. there, trading in our eyes
for prophecies, i will rest. i have always been
hungry for what i cannot breathe.
give me ghost knots & smoke. give me
the piano wire hair of angels. 
i could never understand why
everyone else was alive on the playground
& i was so dead. i'd walk down 
to the creek where there floated 
all the bodies of not-girls. i would
talk to them & they would tell me
all i needed was water. cattails & tall grass.
the gills now like a pleated skirt
which i wear to hear everyone talking.
tell me, what organs have you made
to stay alive? i have one single wing,
a third eye, & the gills. the other children
with their big lungs full of gnats.
they don't even know how loud
their throats are. we know though.
we hear every breath. the snakes in the grass
tell me, "do not dream of being like them."
i lie & tell the snakes, "i don't."
of course i do. who doesn't want
to inhale & have the whole world 
bent to our tongue? that has never been
what i've known. though, lately,
my teeth have been piano keys. 
i invite the minnows to come & play. 

costume jewelry

tell me it's okay
to miss my sickness sometimes. 
how a mania can form a burrow
where everything glints in the light.
we go to the flea market where each stand
is a little graveyard. whose pearls around
skipping around my neck? whose heads
rolled out of their felt hats? the dead birds
circling overhead waiting to take back
their feathers. i sometimes like to believe
in false gods. i prefer costume jewelry
over the real stuff. i like a diamond
without a tongue. a ruby that would
snap under foot. maybe it is because
they are so much more like me.
i have a set of teeth i use just to say,
"i am doing well how about you?"
sometimes my crazy is my favorite
little worm field. look at the chandeliers.
look at the centipedes. i'm not afraid
of worshipping vacancies. i catch
our reflection in the sapphire. my warped
water balloon face. running into a furnace
of glass eyes. let's not pretend 
there wasn't a wound in the ground
where the bones came out. i am promising
that once you get over the fact
that the necklace is not going
to talk back to you, you can say anything.
i pray for trees to grow pearls. i pray
for platinum nights & to loose my feet
to the escape. sliding along a collar bone 
of a dead girl. me, the dead girl
dressed to the nines in costume jewels.
this is what i mean when i talk about
my other life. there she was & also
there she never ever was. 
now, let me go off & be delusional.
i do not want to know these are made
of glass. tell me we are the gold children.
tell me the bugs on the walls 
are not bugs at all, but gems. 

vacuum gut 

i breathe in the dust 
in an attempt to find gold.
or else i am kidding myself.
i know i look for trouble. 
run my tongue across the floor.
here are the paper clip funerals.
then, the eye lash speakeasies.
everyone is hiding something
& i love to clean because
you can find clues on the ground.
once i found a runaway note
from my father
when i was vacuuming 
my parents' house. he said,
"i am a crow now." i put the letter
in my mouth & chewed. 
the body is great at making sense
of debris. i cough whenever
i smell bleach. it is the scent of
"i do not want you to know
what was done here." i have lived
a crime scene life. weeks ago
opening the guts of the vacuum
to find a single tooth. it was 
not my tooth. i know someone
was here gnawing on
the stairs. it has made me
an expert at hiding the seam.
the key must be swallowed 
as a limb. goodbye nighttime.
cloth moved across a greasy stove.
we have been doing nothing
but roasting lamb. by lamb
i mean a child. by a child
i mean myself as a child. 
she sleeps in the oven. peers
out of the door. asks me,
"is it time yet?" i keep working.
wipe down the toilet. the walls.
my own face. once i found
tangles of tinsel. i plucked them
from the innards of the machine.
braided them together. joy is best
kept like this. small & unexpected.
i get on my knees &
continue to worship. 

botanical cure for all despair 

the doctor fills my mouth with dirt.
i try to talk & say, "i want a cherry blossom"
but he cannot hear me
& so he plants a pear tree.
i am a child of pear trees.
the one outside my aunt's house.
how she never harvested the fruit 
until instead of pears, eyes grew.
then mouths. the mouths said,
"why are you not hungry for me?"
the doctor is not a doctor 
but a boyfriend. haven't you ever
believed in love as a panacea?
well, not quite love. when i say love here
i me desire. when i say desire i mean
he took everything he could from me.
i have stuck shovels in my flesh.
lied & said, "i have playdough lungs."
breathed in the noise of an unlocking door.
the taste of soil. how it stings
& sooths. how it carries
the bone shards of the first mammals
who ran, terrified from a ball of fire
in the sky. why are we not worshipping
the sun? why are we not having secret
rendezvous with the ghost of the moon?
the pear tree grows & grows
& like all promises, is abandoned
by the planter. the roots. the branches.
the children who come to climb there
& carve their initials into my throat.
i tell them, "it is not love if it means
you must destroy." then again
here i am with a stomach full
of ancestors. each of them a pear.
each of them fallen in the yard,
rotting like a pile of shoes. 
then, the flesh is sweet. then i weep
in the form of fledglings. 
then the doctor says, "it is a miracle."
cure is a synonym for 
"i want to forget you."

potential museums

in my parent's bedroom
i label each artifact. here is
the only full-length mirror 
in the whole house. 
here is mom's makeup bag
that smells like roses. the dried
lipstick. the fractured blush pan.
everywhere is a museum
if you live like me, with history rot
in your mouth. i have gone there too.
labeled your tongue, "unknown artist."
no i don't believe in curators
or even really picture frames. 
let the penguins run wild. let them
talk to the pigeons &  conspire
to their heart's content.
my father was a builder of museums too.
he mad them in the basement. 
little replicas of us. he would say,
"here is my hungry daughter"
making the eyes blink at me. 
i am the patron saint of falling short.
of calling in the middle of the night
just to hang up. each telephone 
worthy of a plaque that reads,
"we missed our flight." let's not
forget about bathrooms.
the trashcan labeled "tell me more."
what about the gift shops though?
they are always about try
to take that which cannot
be taken. it is a museum after all
not a gender. once i had a boy
reach in my mouth & take one
of my teeth. or was that my father?
or do i have two teeth missing?
it is best not to worry too much
about the underground collection.
a museum is what you see. is what
you want to bury like a king.
the work of a museum is never done.
each room has the capacity 
for fracturing into a shrine.
i will not let this be a shrine.
this is for the greedy & the guiltless.
will you come with me just to look?