parakeet

i mean to say i have eaten 
a poison airplane. has anyone 
told you that you were beautiful 
in a terrible way? please shout at me 
what i need to hear. make the lie
glorious & full of red bean. 
i was just drinking tea for hours
inside a dragonfly. coughed up
my organs one at a time. they were
just bouncy balls. i don’t have 
the guts to tell you i am
looking longingly at pet shops.
put me in a little world 
& feed me the good seed. 
take away my driver’s license
before i get too many ideas.
i used to have visions of
letting all the birds go. thumb worth
of chili oil. rolling my tongue 
in spines. please bring a basket
to carry me in. my panic 
has feathers. repeats everything 
i say. “i do not want the world 
to die.” chicken bones on
the sidewalk. my favorite fantasy
is the one where we wake up 
& neither of us have bodies.
spitting the parakeets out of
our throats. will you promise me
something you cannot? will you
help me cut a hole in my skull
& pull out all the feathers? 

mammalogy 

we sat together as you filled in the name of every bone.
skeleton pictures laid out across your dorm room floor.
weeks ago i lied to my parents to stay with you in new york.
city of skulls & lost irises. out your window, rain fell
& in the morning i walked alone up & down
the streets of hells kitchen. i pretended to be working
on my own school work but i was busy imagining a life together
in which i would lay out & you would point
to every muscle & bone. you would name me. 
i knew i wasn't going to love you as long as i wanted.
my body came apart in my hands. i begged for you 
too often. sitting in the college's sculpture garden
outside of your dorm. then, the snow. slept all day.
blood & warmth. the smell of your sweet musty room.
four chambered hearts. each chamber a storage room.
body of a whale. body of a red panda. you said,
"i can never remember it all." all the creatures 
sprawled out on the floor. little blanks 
over all of their strcutures. i told you, "one word
at a time. one skeleton at a time." when i left 
your apartment in the city i knew i would
never be back. drinking coffee from a silver mug.
looking out the shop window at all the teeth
on their way to work. you can love someone so briefly.
point to bones with them. fibula. pelvis.
claw. jaw. tell them how badly you have wanted
to jump from rooves. weep with them. 
walk in the snow. & then sometimes you are 
both gone. new mammals. leaving the old ones
in love notes & windows. i held up a diagram of an elephant. 
it was one you had completed. you pointed & said, 
"i want to tell you about this one when we're done." 

organ movers 

i call from the yellow pages 
of my back teeth. i say,
"i have a body. come quickly."
think of my brother standing
in his altar boy robes & myself too.
how morning in a church enters 
like a sleeping shark. blue wound.
peach bathroom soap. the priest
would ask for help taking off 
his robes. my hands grazing
his paper towel skin. 
i expect a van of men as organ movers. 
instead a hoard of vultures enter 
to take apart the machine 
pipe by pipe. the church sings
with blue jays in her teeth.
for people like me a church is a place
of lock picking to try to remember
a self. confessional. pour out 
every sin. drinking metal water
from the fountain as the priest 
turned his mouth into a geiger counter. 
they fly away with bolts & brass.
pedal by pedal the instrument.
my heart humming. my lungs,
two moths waiting to smash their skulls
against a light. when they are done
there is a hollow space in the church
where the creature used to be.
stained glass glow. i do not trust
a single one of my memories. to help them
i give them hard candies & i tell them
"do not stop talking." the vultures perch
just outside the doors. feast on 
every untangled note. the guts 
of the animal spilled in the tall grass
beside the corn field. 

ocean

i was trying to not caught up
another blue jay. they fight
over bird feeders in my stomach.
once i heard the ocean's name
in the breaking of a bone. 
typhoon. turgid river.
the monster with hooks for eyes.
i tell you about how my body 
was made into a bay. anchors. gulls.
men with too many legs. let me off
on this stop. trains going centipede
all through the night. when i see
the future it arrives like chocolate shavings.
melt in my hands. smear the room.
rotten oranges with golden seeds.
a skull found me to say, 
"put the fire down." i've burned little libraries
in my sleep. i've opened a box of cereal
to release a flock of moths. the bat
who flickers from tree to tree.
today i could drown in a thimble.
a bird bath. an ocean is really 
whatever you could die inside of.
ocean mouth. ocean spoon. ocean
father. trust me i would love
to know how to swim. on my back.
shaving my head & letting go 
of my jellyfish hair. a kraken waiting
inside a white refrigerator egg. 
his eyes, cyclones. stirring a bowl 
of dead birds. i cannot see the bottom.
studies of staircases. belly of swords.
please do not give up on me.
the payphone at the end of time rings
& i pick up to hear the ocean ask,
"can you walk home tonight?"
i shake my head. water through 
the windows. voice of thick cord 
& mother stingrays. 

telescope

from your roof
we look into the eyes 
of the giant squid.
monster is a place you go 
to cultivate a fever.
do not tell me about my pain.
i feed it humming bird nectar 
& give it a blanket fort.
telling you, “i am mostly over it
until i’m not.” everyone always has
suggestions. mine is to avoid
conversations about the afterlife.
a remote control lets me 
flip between a the telescope 
& the microscope.
everything always feels 
out of frame. paper napkin moon.
take out box of knees.
eating with a warped fork.
i dreamed a morgue of stars.
piles of dust.
you sifted in them in search 
of designer shoes but only found 
my father’s pocket watch. 
put the powder on your face.
i kiss a crash site clean.
the street lamp winks
at me & now we’re lovers.
100s of years of capsized tongues. 
now let’s rename every galaxy.
that one is a stray eyelash. that one
is a u-turn. that one is
a glitter bomb. through the lens
i see a gushing vein.
you promise me you are okay. i am not.
i walk into the night with a syringe
brandished like a telephone. 

flood warning

i tell myself i could live on
a stray eyelash & no one
would ever have to know. 
floating 
fish bowl veils.
there are flood warnings today
& i dream of living 
in my fathers mouth.
sometimes the truth will 
make a bonfire of you.
i guard a pile of watermelon rinds.
they were a gift. they rot.
sprout angel eyes: wild & knowing.
has god ever leaned down &
apologized? said “i don’t know
why i did that?”
not to anyone i know.
instead i think of him 
like my father 
in a room of simple regrets. 
a pocket knife. a stale glass
of water. when someone tells you
they made you 
ask them what that means to them.
in an imaginary phone call 
my father says, “it means 
i am god” in another he says,
“it means i am sorry.”
eating bullets on
the porch. I see a world of
flooded basements. sharks.
sting ray. gathering my attic life,
i hold a gun like the flood 
is something to be fought.
instead all i can be sure of
is that there will be water.
a shower. pulling the curtain
around me like a coffin.
learning to breathe backwards.
locking my bedroom door. locking
my bathroom door. monster clouds 
come to rub together their hands.
this is how i prepare 
which is to say there is 
no way to prepare.

rapunzel city 

if i had enough hair 
i would lower myself
into the mouth of a fresh broadcast.
call me the statistic to prove
we are still alive. once a man 
dressed as spiderman in time square
handed me a piece of paper that asked,
"would you like to die?"
it wasn't a threat or a question of concern. 
now i live in a land of towers.
each of them with hair spilling & spilling out.
a vessel is maybe meant 
to be overtaken. too much to fit.
discovering how far a strand 
of puppet string can go before
it becomes a man. i wanted 
to let every princess out. i wanted to help
them set fire to their mothers
but their mothers were princesses too
& so we have a problem of linkages.
let's not get haywire though. 
if you look at a burning girl
you can tell who lit her, right?
i count my fingers. i count my teeth.
i call another rapunzel & she is 
trying to get along better with 
her family. she thinks maybe
she can make it work & maybe 
things will get so better she will forget
what it was like to be in the tower 
at all. i nod along because
i've been here before. i know i can't
tell her anything so we just watch
the television. the television says,
"let's stop being genders already."
i say amen. when night falls 
we all go to our windows. i remember
when the sky fell in on itself.
everything was dark brown & buzzing.
we laughed in that summer dark.
the outlet no longer worked. all we had
were our mouths. the stars have been
a projection for millenea but i still
sometimes think when i see them
that maybe one or two are helicopter. 

helicopter

i want to be the green tomato
on the sea gull leg plants.
i wake up & remember you are here
& the sky is full of dragon’s blood.
when i fall in love i take 
the dinner plates with me.
blood the color of egg plant.
did you hear me talking to god
last night out of habit?
there is a helicopter pad 
on the roof & one on my tongue.
the rescue plan involves mustard 
& a fist full of nails. the tree house 
never was meant to hold 
this many cows. a crow comes &
is a helicopter. then a priest comes
& is a helicopter & it’s time to
light the candles. i’m trying
to sort out which fibers of myself
exist only to make my father proud.
murder the sponge. eat the hairy cake.
kiss me until i am just 
vanilla pudding. jelly bracelet 
for me & one for you. the helicopter
says it’s here to save you but
it’s here for photographs.
for a wild story. to make 
an acolyte of each & every eye.
do not worry. there is no 
rescue mission. i have a heart
full of quarters & baby teeth.
come on. let’s buy a car &
see how close we can get to mars. 

future treadmills

don't tell me to run.
on the television they are talking
about a new kind of fitness.
one where you don't have
to think at all. plug yourself
in to a frozen tv dinner. 
i got my legs from craisglist.
a man texting me from the old apartment
to ask, "are you up?" i am never "up"
but sometimes i do sleepwalk 
& light my hair on fire.
the oven was going all day & i simply
walked in & turned it off.
the future has a chrome kitchen
& a land line. a dial tone
in the back of my throat. i tell you
over a dying candle. "i don't know
if what i remember is true."
the future doesn't ask questions like this.
doesn't excavate the wound.
puts on a baseball cap & chews 
beef jerky in front of the beer store.
there aren't enough reasons
to repair the ferris wheel. instead 
we could have a car big enough
to own the world. i do not want
to be healed. i want to have revenge.
i want to look beautiful without effort.
a silk scarf pulled from a costume closet.
there are too many guitar players
& not enough mandolin players.
i come to the hampster wheel 
holding my rose-scented rosary.
i used to pray it every night.
each bead a broken blood vessel. 
burst beach ball. don't leave me alone.
i have an outlet to crawl into.
you still have to teach me how to breathe.

wood glue

we try to put the dining table chairs
back together again. they keep 
turning into tarantulas 
while we are out in the city
picking pawpaws. everyone is hungry
in the insatiable way that requires butter.
the dining table says, "enough forks."
we use wood glue & stand still
like a performance art piece 
or a statue, waiting for the legs
to become legs again. once, i watched 
a boy i was dating sit on a chair 
& it shattered. the world just
doesn't always want to hold us.
i keep thinking i'm next when
i sit at the table. often there is
a roasted turkey on the table
that no one else can see. i want to give you
the dream house. i want to give you
everything without wobbling.
sometimes i'll go into someone's house
& think, "oh they're a person."
my house is where a goblin tries 
to grow tomatoes. the glue seems
like it's holding. really all you can do
is hope for the best. wait for 
the fall-apart & imagine it graceful.
i want to be the dropped dish 
everyone is fussing over. shards of me
fractured across the house.
we will find slivers for years to come.