killjoy

when i say i'm a killjoy i mean
i am a bird who robs vending machines
& laughs like a broken jar. 
i do not want to be happy for the sake
of being happy. sometimes i see
the fresh suburbia gutting our meadows
& i think of how it births people
whose joy cannot reach their eyes.
lawn mowers & ghosts in the sparse woods. 
if i could collect all the leaf blowers
i would burn them & we would dance.
they hate what they cannot engulf. 
what emotions they cannot annex. 
our joy is the after. what comes when 
the plans to fuck the woods fail. we get
to climb trees & open chestnuts with
our feet. they will call us "killy joys"
because they do not know how
to return with us. our blood, like creeks
from which the cows drink. i can see 
the sky full of beer bottles & headlights.
our shadows, like the last crows
of the season. in my purse sometimes
i carry chicken eggs. in my head 
i am a bowl of keys. none of them go
to anything which is unfortunately
the point of being barefoot. 
once, as a teenager, i begged the boyfriend
to stop eating my hair as a joke. 
he leaned in & said, "i could eat
your fingers instead." would you believe me
if i told you i fed him? later though,
in the dark, i learned how to eat his hair too.
then, his fingers. then, too his bones. 

curfew 

we loved the eat the dark
with our hands. the gas station glowed
like a chapel in our mouths. our shadows
painted on the gum-stuck parking lot
in the middle of the night. 
we watched scary movies. opened 
all the doors in your house. you parents
weren't home. how were your parents
never home? they fly into the clouds
& became thunder. we lied as much
as we could. the sofa. the skin.
confessions shared on our bellies. 
i was always the nervous one. i looked
for cops in the trees. i worried about
my mom finding out. i just wanted
to kick holes in every hour that met me.
we had short hair. it was summer.
somehow the shortness of the night
makes it richer. like a lake plunge.
i remember once we saw a cop car & hid
in an alley. it smelled like cigarettes &
trash bags. we held our breath as if 
the car were going to turn side ways
& ride the walls of the place. you all laughed
while i imagined the police man's hands
reaching to capture us from the night.
we got back to your house. i laid
on the couch & fell asleep before the movie
was over. before i could brush my teeth.
sugar rung my gums all night. the dark, with us, 
another girl body we had escaped with. 

vaccine carousel 

manifestation journal: i am free
of disease. we call the plumber
& he takes the house away in 
a little red wagon. in the morning
i search for possums. i plan to follow them
into their hollows. i am ready for my
marsupial phase. possums can't get rabies
which is exciting. one less worry
to carry into the sunlight. i am hoping
that one day people will remember me
as soft & bright. you can control a lot more
& a lot less than you think you can.
once, i squeezed my fist & brought 
the moon closer. i used to be on live radio
as a teenager. we would talk to adults
who had little snakes in their wallets.
my dad carries a picture of me
as a little girl in his wallet. i have seen him
put it on his tongue. how it survives,
i do not know. likewise with me. 
the drowning. the moon. always the moon.
poets & the moon. in a dream last night
we were trespassing. we were ordering soft serve
for only a dollar (impossible). next year
at the beach i think i'll go in the water. 
i think i'll try ocean mammal life. the first
time i went i had this wild thought,
"what if i'm a sea witch." obviously that is
impossible. i do not live by the sea so i am
instead a witch of whichever tree is closest to me.
i have conversations with the cedar near the front
of the yard. she has the most spiders 
compared to the other trees. every once 
in awhile one will dangle down to tell me
a secret. i usually already know it.
"your sibling is a bird today." i leave out
sunflower seeds for her. drive to the pharmacy
where everyone gets to be a cow. get any needles
i can & spend the rest of the day with the bugs. 

sleepover 11:11 wishes across a girlhood

i want to become a flock of geese. i want
to talk to the boy with a round face
& a handful of freckles. i want my fish
to live forever. i want to be thin. i want to be 
as thin as a door. i want to dissappear.
i want a roof without any holes. i want
a friend who does not try to eat me. i want
my father's hands. i do not want
to be a puppet but i do want to be gutted. 
i want to be a boy. i want to become a flock of geese.
i want to fly south for the winter. i want to 
swim the old lake. i want to call a stranger.
i want to get good grades all year. i want 
to be rich. i want to be rich enough that 
we can stay a whole week at the beach. i want
to be an only child. i want to take a previous
wish back. i want to kiss girls. i want to kiss
boys. i want to be a movie director. i want
to stay awake forever. i want my crush to like
me back. not in the middle school way but
in a way that makes a body possible. i want
to be a flock of geese. i want to go to college
in new york city. i want lights in my eyes.
i want to take all my friends with me 
inside a box made of feathers. i want a body
that does not fold inward. i want a face
without doors. i want each wish to be
a goose or a skeleton. i want a boyfriend. 
i want to be asked to a dance. i want to be
a boyfriend. i want to be a dance. i want enough
girlhood to survive the winter. i want
a body. i want a body. i want a body. 

house of tooth-picks

in a future without trees
we'll have to grow houses 
in our mouths. i get the wet night
without a single firework.
in middle school we had a toothpick
house project. i built mine 
to live inside of. felt grateful for
the smallness. drank a sprite
from the lonely vending machine.
carried the house home
across the fields behind the school.
at home the house always caught fire.
i had to put it out with only
my breath. i am good at makeshift
disaster survival. i save the bed room.
the toothpicks are slightly minty.
they remember being trees just like i
remember being trees. one day when
nothing is left & the sun eats us 
like potato chips i'll find a box
of tooth picks at the back of a closet.
i'll weep & tell my lover, "we can have
another house." this house so small
that no sadness can survive.
i am a builder of smaller & smaller 
futures. we will eat pears. we will eat
canned stars. we will lick out fingers clean.
i remember exactly how i built the house
in middle school. an entrance without
a door for all the coyotes to run through. 
here, our little house at the edge
of the world. the trees in our mouths. 
keep me in the palm of your hand. if we must,
i can even fit between your teeth.

second earth

i believe only in sympathetic magic. 
you become the earth & the earth 
becomes you. i have a box full of eyes
in the back of the closet. you start digging
& so i must create a distraction.
look! there is the second planet 
like a gobstopper inside the first. look!
i am a hawk or an eagle depending on
who you think looks most like your father.
i promise i'll call you back (i will not). i promise
i won't forget to mail the check 
(i will). the second earth is just like ours
only everyone is the size of a breath. i guess
that is already what we are. i see the second world
& i deliver squares of chocolate. i treat
the creatures like sea monkeys. hello my little gods.
hello my tiny orcas. let us get really angry
& have no where to go with it. the part i am 
not sure about is if there is a third world rolling
around the second one like a kickball.
i have this problem where i treat everything
but myself, like a child. as a kid, i would harvest
the footballs from the play bin to spend
all recess cradling them. i felt sad that they
spent so much time spiraling through the air. 
my empathy is wet. is a gourd, seeds dried
in the belly. shake me to the moon. shake me
until the second earth thinks it's raining. i keep
as many secrets as i can manage. when i need
to hunt deer, i become the deer. run until
a rifle emerges in the sky. my dreams are not
thick enough to conjure & neither are my spells.
instead, i have my smaller planet. i treat it like
a baby. spoon feel the gnat-sized crows. 
hide the whole thing from you. i guess maybe
you have a planet too. what if they met? what if
they fell in love? i am sorry. my imagination 
is designed to escape. i live in a house with
thousands of exits but is never as many as i need. 

padded room

i go to a drum place where
all my eyes can have cornholes.
please be gentle. this is my second
time trying to eat the cake. i have never
loved the way i was designed. instead,
i buy plastic forks. i have a birthday party
bounce house. the neighbors get married
in the rain & i am invite by virtue
of having windows. in the night, 
i tend to harvest pillows. the first time
i had a boy make a saddle of me,
we had to go to target & buy a pillow.
i carried a candle into his mouth. my car
filled with smoke. he did not love me 
& i was trying to force it. his cat was
really too big. we fired a cannon into
the bay. watermelon keep growing
past the season. inside each is a foal. 
i am broken seams. a turned-around
portrait. my aunt's house is someone 
else's house now. i wonder if they smell us.
the decades of our lingering. please 
let us all just stay where we are. shelter 
in place while the wind has big machines.
then maybe we will have enough sugar.
i licked my fingers clean. i poured smoke
from a hole in my head. up the road 
they are selling a trailer. i consider buying it
& telling no one. it is rusted & full
of birds. i could go in there & come out
a bird person. fly above everything 
& see all the houses as a train set. tell me
do you know how to love through windows?
i do not but it is all i have ever tried. 

lapis

i saw the other planets 
& they all had poets. different
languages. different trees &
ways the dead are remembered. 
always someone giving history 
a jukebox. i sing in the way 
the wind does. i grew my hair so that,
if i needed, we could use the strands
to write. i have seen the dark
heavy stars beyond the playground.
how, even in their sleeping there is
a poet on the surface. she wears 
stars like set gems. jumps rope 
until the fish come to listen. i see 
the red giants & the expanding brims
of their hats. their poets are 
on fire just i like i am. just like 
the helicopter in the final breaths
of the year. i am hopeful that i will
get to lay down in the gold. hear 
the river say, "that is enough." 
i do not know if i have ever known
what it feels like to have the world 
glint around you. not a spare tooth
but a vein in the blue. instead, i am 
a poet of the fracture. a broken jaw
like a boomerang tossed into 
the sun & back as rain.  

supply chain issues

it has more to do with god 
than you might think. when i say "god"
i always mean the soil & sometimes
i mean the sky. i hope in my next life i get
to be at the purgatory of the food chain.
call me a decomposer. my friends
are isopods & earth worms. my friends
have eyes in the roofs of our mouths.
again, over the phone, a little voice says,
"due to supply chain issues" & i imagine
all the ghosts our hunger rings. all these bells
down the belly of the world. 
oceans that do no know my name 
but whose faces we drink. the empire will try
to make you believe you are 
a beautiful parasite. no, my love, we are
grinders. we could be in the fresh filth
of the leaf litter if you could burry the bone.
if we could send the mailbox to space.
no more street sweeping. no more plastic bags.
only holy shoes & a bread crumb trail
that takes you home despite the birds.
i am less & less sure i am an animal like i was
supposed to be. i feel often just like
a sand castle as the tide comes in. let the supply
never reach me. we can walk to the wound
in the ground. wait for our phones to become
crickets. i believe in return. the salmon 
are always talking. i can hear them wherever i go.
they say, "give the moon your hair." they say,
"what if it is not ours?" 

solve for x

inside the moon is a little rabbit
who only wants to eat a bag of chips
down to the crumbs. i do not know
what i need to get out of this mess.
sometimes i try to get the rabbits
to eat my credit cards but then
how will i pair for my bag of air?
when i was small i imagined money
like oranges. like a rind & then a 
stinging fruit. i went through a few phases
of "what i want to be when i grow up."
a veterinarian & then a movie director. 
both of which were always out of my league.
i took a career test in middle school
& the match it gave me was "magician."
in some ways, i have lived up to that.
i pull rabbits out of hats & glove boxes 
& the moon. i work in illusion. here is
my normal person face. here is my healthy body.
i never was very good at math. 
when asked to solve for "x" all i ever find
are worms. they have their own language
for poetry & their own language for 
mundane speak. i know it is going to rain
but not enough to really get my bones
like i need it to. i remember once
when i had all these ideas about the forest
we were driving & the rain made a moon
of us. i drowned i think. emerged a different
kind of fish. my algebra comes out wrong. 
a goose where a number should be.
a television with a video game. never enough air.
the credit card, a chip bag we can't
get open. rabbits in the sink. in the tub.
the magician i am supposed to be, tapping
on the window at daybreak.