vacation mirror 

if you are brave enough you can
have a vacation anywhere. sometimes 
in the middle of a stressful sentence
i will take a vacation. the psychologist
in the room will call it dissociation 
but i call it paddle boat. i call it 
white water. i call it a porch without
any bottom to it. the deer are eating
the house. the house is also 
eating the deer. i call you & you are 
furious about something i can't remember doing.
my backyard is a vacation but only
when there is a thunderstorm. when you don't
text me back i think "did i ask
for too much?" at the beach no one has
heads anymore. there is a new corporation
who will remove your head & replace it 
with a pot & fake flowers for 
no small fortune. everyone reports it 
makes them feel "less stressed." i think truly
we should probably be more stressed.
an empire is always dissociating. eyes like
fried eggs staring through whoever it can. 
i try to be alive as best i can. in the woods
we eat jelly mushrooms from a rotted log.
they are as orange as all my dreams. 
when you finally call me it is late. too late
for any of this. you ask me if we are 
still going to go to the big event. i do not
remember the big event but i play along
hoping my recollections of the commitment
will return to me. they never do. i am unsure
if i am missing a promise or if we 
just needed to mirage together a little.
in another life i think everything was
really really smooth. the leaves. the trees.
your teeth. my beard. all of it like glass.
i paint one side so we can see ourselves.
the mirror, not quite a portal but maybe
someday. i am having a vacation right now
& i have as many as i can today. 

cook out

let's put our fingers on the sun.
i want a hot dog life. my siblings are 
driving cars off cliffs. i am at the bottom
with a butterfly net. come on everyone,
let's be alive just a little longer.
i will eat what i must. for the first time
since high school, i have been craving meat.
i think if it weren't for the vegetarian thing
i might have pastrami. my grandmother
is a lion at the zoo. she devours the carcass
of an elk. we sneak her in hot dogs
so she can have some joy. at the nursing home
where she died there was a family room
full of incomplete puzzles. most of them
were missing a piece. i imagined 
we could fall through those holes if we needed to.
summer is ending & we haven't had a cook out
in years. when i was small we stood in the grill
& compared char lines. we always at my 
younger sibling first. then me. then my mother.
my father, nothing like zeus, licked his fingers.
used too much ketchup. i want to come 
together for real. i want to sit beneath
a folding moon. plastic lawn chairs. bare feet. 
one year we were obsessed with water. 
i put my thumb over the mouth
of a hose. rainbow birth. hot dog light.
lately i am the weaver without a loom. i am 
the bug house searching for the cricket. 
in the night, my sibling sends me
pictures of hot dogs. some from a string. 
some from the other side. ghost hot dogs.
i "heart" them all. i never know what else to say. 
the grill rusts. becomes a home for isopods. 
my grandmother's grave is a hole in a puzzle
trying to depict a beautiful beach. i always try
to look for what is missing & turn it into a portal. 
the hot dogs elude me. i each a peach as if it were a heart. 

breeders

don't get me wrong i want 
everything. i want kids & i want
to name them after plants. 
i want to put them on my shoulders
& lie about the moon. i want us
to have a little house with a roof
that does not leak & a bathroom
full of spiders. i wonder if i was
what my parents wanted. my father
built a deck & used to drink out there
until the stars were loud as the cicadas. 
i would sometimes sit with him. sometimes
tell him stories about the snakes
& the toads by the creek. i like to hope
that sometimes i have been what he craved.
he has, on occasion, been what i needed
which is all most of us can say about 
our fathers. we would drive through
the corn fields. the corn, each a baby
in a husk. maybe he dreamed of a child
less prone to terror. maybe he thought
all of this would be easier. i do not let myself
get too far into the breeder thoughts.
not because i don't on some level want it 
but you can get crazy with symbols. 
we all want to repeat a myth. i consider
what it means to grow life in all directions.
to spread the milkweed seeds when they arrive
with downy parachutes. to open the cattails.
to carry a bale of hay to the goats. i steal 
the chicken eggs in the morning 
from the coop. inside each of them are 
children i could name after plants. 
my father likes to show up without warning.
brings wood shavings. names me  
after a distance & drives home through the fields. 

stomach lake

i buy a boat & let it rot 
in the front yard. there is a lake
i visit full of worms & jellyfish.
we drive past my childhood church
& it looks smaller than i remember it.
the mary statue is eroding. soon it will be
mary magdelene then it will be 
my grandmother with her bones
like old spoons. once my father tended
the garden there. we ate hoagies in 
that shade of the hill trees. my stomach
was a lake of sharks. hunger always 
like an open window blowing papers
across the room. i ate like a snake.
swallow the mouse whole & hope
it gives me what i need. i lay on the floor
in the living room before
anyone else is awake. i dream of a place
i could go to avoid all my organs.
they float like balloons in the air. it is
just me & my ribs. get rid of the blood too
while you're at it. there is a diving school
strangely located in the farmland.
i imagine them knocking on my door
at night in search of a place to swim.
they choose my body. i let them in because
at this point who hasn't swam here?
i would ask them to look & see if there are
any wedding rings or maybe a penny 
at the bottom. i am told by some lovers
that i have great natural resources. i try 
my best to hide them. the salmon & the lamprey.
they have been taken so many times. please,
i need what i have left. i run the sink hot
& roast my hands like lobsters. i am having
a feast without my stomach. i am going
to eat just like the butterflies do. a corridor 
of sugar. the sun, a citrus moon. 

mailbox full of spiders 

the government asks for money
which i do not have & they do not have.
i cut off a finger & hope it's enough this year. 
a letter comes with nothing
but a breath inside. the spiders 
are having a sweet sixteen for 
one of their ideas, a web the size
of the horizon. i do think vampires 
are hot but sadly the government 
is a vampire & it is not hot at all.
i have met people with no blood at all.
they are walking around like dried dates.
sugary from the sun but no longer
able to get heavy & roll down a big hill.
the mailbox has been growing. i buy 
another one to give the previous one
to the spiders. the spiders misinterpret 
this gesture & assume i have bought them
another house. i probably shouldn't
have paid my taxes. i probably should have
laid down & pretended to be car kill.
in this place, following the rules 
is often a path to becoming someone
you do not want to be. i want to be
a person who houses spiders. i want 
to be a person who can give 
& receive when the occasion calls
for it. i ask a neighbor if they ever have
the problem with the spiders. they show me 
how with one hand they smash 
any ghost who tries to be a part
of their government. i ask them if they
feel bad & they admit, "of course i do.
doesn't everyone?" in the night
i go to the spiders. i say, "i will never
break you." it is a lie. i am not sure
what i will or won't have to do. 
once i received a letter in the mail demanding
i sign up for selective service because
i had just become a prime gender in
the government's eyes. i didn't have spiders
back then but if i did i think they would
have devoured the letter for me.
told me, "come be a different type of machine."
i tell them stories. i tell them they can
send mail to anyone they want pretending
to be me. they write to my mother. my sibling.
a lover who i know still holds a mountain
for me. they write better than i ever could. 
i buy more mailboxes. the government 
eats a sandwich in my hair. 

rag weed season

the more i talk the less i know
about language. i cut out my tongue 
& make a delicious stew. well i guess
i am just deciding it is delicious
because i can't taste anything anymore.
i ask the butcher for blood
& he asks, "how much?" in the yard
the rag weeds are past the point 
of no return. taller than me they 
start talking about god. gold breath
in the dusk light. i tell them
i have no interest in the subject. 
right now i am concerned about
butter & bagels. i am concerned
about grapes. about the flat tire that
keeps coming for me on the purple highway.
my phone tells me someone is a car crash.
i make a delicious stew from my phone
which is much less delicious than
the one from my tongue. we will 
have to make do with what we have. 
i call a service meant to help people
like me but the operator is confused
who i am. i hang up, deciding it is easier
to just walk to the moon & gather 
a few handfuls. i tried to pull the ragweed. 
most of them came easy. it was like
they wanted to let their legs go.
the government is installing cameras.
they try to make a treaty with the rag weed.
the rag weed says, "this is my body. this is
where i drink." the government laughs.
that had never stopped them before. they say,
"you can keep your eyes if we can
live inside them." the rag weed complies. 
i do not manage to uproot them all.
they gaze with a half-sight. i tell them a story
about the sky. a cloud where on 
the other side we are all soft & tongueless. 
carve a new language. one where 
our eyes are our own. we drink until 
we are river & then the rivers are us. 

free fall

sometimes i am the ant & sometimes
i am the watermelon falling from
the top of an elevator building. 
you can get so small that the air doesn't
know what to do with you. you can
swell to the point where there is
no choice but to break. god i love
to come apart. i love to get my sugar
all over the floor. call someone i haven't
talked to in years on the highway with
miles to go. find a fresh way to live
below sea level in an apartment
where the windows fill with soil. where
bugs mistake the place for a burial. 
i try to explain, "no i am not dead yet
to the best of my knowledge." the bugs 
suggest, "maybe we could try."
i have a falling dream just like other people.
i appreciate that i never make contact,
instead i watch windows rush past
full of bibles & casseroles. i am not 
the kind of person who will ever go 
sky diving. i know how that goes. 
i drop vases & glasses & plates all the time.
the shards make continents on the floor.
i don't do it on purpose but the truth is
i do kind of like to look at things when
they're broken. i throw a watermelon 
in the yard for the chickens. 
the pink guts & the seeds like pale pupils. 
when i was little i made my whole family
do a fire drill. i was upset because my mom
wouldn't get us a trampoline so we could
practice jumping from the roof. i stayed up
all that night imagining how i could
leap from my bedroom window 
& be okay. i have been caught by so much. 
there feels like less & less though 
the older i get. i start putting trampolines 
all over the yard. you never know who might
fall from the sky. i could be me.
it could be a ghost. after a fresh rain the dirt
toils with worms & centipedes. 
an ant falls from the roof & lands safely.
i hold a mug above the kitchen floor & i 
don't drop it this time. 

blood pact

we are going to escape the meat grinder
in tendrils or as flanks. still, i will love you
pools of crimson. the butcher has
a house just for screams. i have a shed
full of bees. the bees say, "electro-shock therapy."
in the yard we dig for coins. the chicken bones
mix with the dog bones & then all of us
are marrow. i put on walking directions 
to a parking lot near my ex's house. it will be
a five year walk in reverse. there is not
enough sugar to keep me from slowly
floating off the ground. complex carbs. 
complex mirrors. a computer without 
any lungs. we make cuts in our hands. instead
of a pact we become a graft. i'll grow 
you pears if you grow me peaches. did you know
that apple trees are usually clones? one fruit
cut into thousands of hears. do the trees 
look around & see themselves repeated 
as a dream of a nightmare? i wake up sometimes
to rooms full of me. i call my mom in the middle
of the night & she picks up. i tell her
i am sick & i need a chariot. she tells me
she is coming on foot. the corn fields
& the soy bean fields. the goats, two-legged
for the occasion. we all get lost. all of us 
end up in other people's homes. the walls,
like jupiter. you know what i mean. 
empty & gigantic. once i tricked the ceiling
into raising a few inches to make more room
for us. our hair was tall & winged. our beaks,
perfect for splitting clams. i can call you
without a cell phone. you'll know i'm talking
because there is a little riverman in our blood.
he paddles on a route from our eyes
to our guts. do you hear the sun? god it can 
be so damn loud. 

stress ball

i need to close my hand around
the soft world to make it stop. 
my fist becomes a bird house & all
the lightbulbs arrive to feast. i have a neighbor
who never leaves her house. she waves
from the window, a little moon in her hand.
i ignore most of my stress because
if i peered at it too closely it would be 
unbearable. there is no money. not in the walls
or the windows or the screens. i reopen 
some of my selling-my-self accounts. i can
bring you a pizza. i can bring you 
a ghost. i can close my fist tight
& pretend something is leaving me. 
my partner tells me he is going to tie me up
& throw me in the closet so that i will rest. 
i do not think that will help. there are
dragons & computer in my brain that 
i will use to mine for coin. at a truck stop
maybe in new jersey or maybe 
in new york, i see a machine that says,
"get bit coin here." another one says,
"i can make you ice cream." i do not buy
the robot ice cream but i want it more
than i like to admit. i disappear inside my own
mouth whenever i can. i bit the stress ball open
& let the sofa stuff bleed onto the floor.
i feel like a great cloud sulking around
unable to rain. the first records of stress balls
are from 1300s china. instead of soft though
they were metal. believed to bring good health
& peace. we have been squeezing 
tight as we can for centuries. i have never learned
how to let go. not of the dark or the mailbox.
the one neighbor drives a fast car at night
down the cornfield roads. he likes to try
& punch it right at the top of the hill
so that he goes airborne just for a moment. 
a car can be a stress ball & so can a mother.
i try really hard to cry but can't manage it. 
instead, i eat a sour peach. it is not a stress ball
but at least it is a moon. it is thankfully still summer.  
there are still cicadas singing all day long. 
sometimes in the throws of their song 
i can feel like i am the stress ball instead of
the fist. wrap you fingers around me. 
hold me until i am as soft as i can be. 

the house sheds its skin

you are not supposed to help
a snake if you find it mid-shed.
still, i want to. my desire to unburden
is sometimes destructive. here is
your fresh skin. here are my teeth.
the house is crumpled, trying to find
her new body. the moon stays full
for three days. competes with the sun.
i have been trying to find a new body
inside my own for my whole life.
each answer disappears. i think i was meant
to be a cicada or a lanternfly but 
instead i was given flesh. the house 
has holes in the walls. 
the house hungers for more doors.
we do not make them. i touch 
the place where once my uncle wanted
to cut a portal. i touch the place
where my sibling once punched
the wall. the wound, never healing.
if the house becomes something else
i hope it becomes an obelisk. you might say,
"but you can't live inside an obelisk."
this is true but i am not worried about that.
i am worried about what will be left
when the shedding is done. maybe i will
just make a quilt with the dead skin. 
i know no one else will want it. maybe they
will pretend things are not changing. 
that is typically what my family does. 
i do not blame them. who wants to lose
everything in exchange for something
terrifying? the last time i slept inside the house
all the windows were crooked as if they were
threatening to fall out into the yard. 
i touched one softly. it felt like
the surface of an eye.