oboe recital

despite how horrible i was at playing it
i loved the instrument. 
i craved the smooth keys & how they listened
to the softest touch. sometimes
on the floor of my bedroom i would
inspect each ligament. peer through
the vertebrae of my oboe like a telescope.
stars waved hello through my window. 
i was terrible mostly because
i was not fond of practicing. my tongue
was always too big for the double-reed
or maybe the reed was too small. 
when my teacher played i always thought
it sounded like ghosts trying to remember
how to talk. more often than i'm proud of 
i gave up all together in the middle of a concert.
i would hold the reed in my mouth.
poise my fingers, and play nothing
at all. move my hands as if the sound
of the whole fifth-grade band was coming
from the throat of my ghost. 
other kids shouted from their horns
& smacked the shoulders of their big drums.
i let my machine be the telescope. a hallway
without any fluorescent lights. my hands
getting bigger until they could carry
the moon. our songs were sluggish 
& strange. the work of a flock of geese 
misremembering all formations. 
after two years we gave my oboe back. 
it was just a rental. i missed it when it was gone
though i felt like maybe i had wrong it.
like maybe if i had wrestled with it longer
i could have gotten its voice & talked 
to the ghosts who emerged each night
from the corn fields around my house
in their own symphony of contours & dark. 

firefly dinner

i learned how to eat stars
from the fireflies who 
knit their own sky 
shoulder to shoulder
with gutters & the billboards. 
you cannot let the capitalism light
kick the glowstick out of you. 
there are berries & persimmons who grow
on the side of the big white knuckle highway. 
sometimes when i call a friend
it feels like weaving. i open my mouth
& there are all the galaxies i have
swallowed & who have swallowed me.
my one dog likes to kill stuffed animals 
& toss their cloud guts all over the bed.
she would make a good comet
& i see that for her one day. i refuse
to imagine us as stop signs or guns. 
sometimes i wonder if the planets
write poems about our smallness
just like we write poems about
their gigantic faces. when i came home
& the house did not have legs
i was relieved. the monsters who live
in the woods by the driveway 
demanded some kind of offering
in exchange for my absence. i brought
them an apple from the discount bin.
maybe those seeds will turn into a star.
a bright & wild glowing thing
right in my yard. right beside
where the fireflies used to talk 
before autumn came with a shovel.
i learned everything i know from
the fireflies. how to say goodbye without
saying goodbye. the last one at the end
of the august. a little high five voice.
i call you on the drive back. the early dark.
i wanted to make sure you were
still there. that you were coming home too.

moon garbage 

the moon pulls through
the kfc & i watch as she just orders
mashed potatoes & tosses the container 
in the parking lot for the rats.
you think there are 
coyotes everywhere. gods i wish
there were. i could use someone
to chase me into the underworld. 
instead we just get the neighborhood 
dogs who wish they were a pack.
on the right night they 
get together to pretend. one of them
is the leader & he gets really wild
with it. you tell me the coyotes 
would eat us & i explain that 
i have spent my life ready
to become part of something greater. 
i love cleaning up trash because 
it makes me feel less useless. 
the microplastics in my brain
tell me we should buy a boat
& ride it across the dark water 
until we reach the moon. there are
no supermarkets but there is 
a really sweet bodega which is
all anyone could ever need. 
a car loves there too & she is
the makeshift coyote. the divine 
is constant but always leaving. 
maybe i think that where i come from
cashing is holy. a language a lover.
you are always what is just out
of your reach. on tiktok late
at night someone dms me to ask,
“are you cleaning up after the moon?”
i lie & say, “of course not.”  

fire ants 

this week i have thought 
way too much about my 
high school boyfriend. he had 
long thin fingers & he was three years
older than me. we come upon 
a colony of fire ants & i remember 
how once he called me screaming—-
he begged for a water slide or else
a place to de-bone. he had stepped
on a fire ant hill beside his
grandparents pool in florida.
i didn’t know how to help him
& so i just screamed too. 
all of this makes me think
of the lives i am living 
right now in other peoples heads. 
if maybe when he sees a wild snake 
he thinks of me. i wanted 
to impress him. show him how
i was unafraid of venom or
scales. once i caught one
beneath the bridge by his house. 
the mushroom fields were cooking
near by & so the air smelled like
sweet manure & dark. the snake writhed
just like me. his parents weren’t home
that day. my body was a jungle gym
for the boy world. i think of him
not like a lover but like a species. 
i talked to him only once 
years after we broke up. it was 
over facebook. i deliberately do not
remember what we said. there are 
more ants than people by
a long shot. i stop to stare 
at one fire ant hill 
on a street corner in a town
i’ve never been before. all the ants
are screaming. i do not know
who i am on the phone with. 

walmart parking lot 

you told me to meet you 
in the walmart parking lot. 
the sky was holding a knife.
in the u.s. every highway goes
the same place. there is a gas station
without any eyes & 
a restaurant too good to be true.
in oklahoma the land lays down
like i’ve never seen. somehow
despite their hoard 
i find you in the walmart 
parking lot next to a faceless truck.
inside it’s like a portal. 
i am small again just looking
for a palm of sugar. i used to love
to run away from my mom 
in our walmart & now i just run away
from time. a blanket in the sky.
the hotel where the door opens
right to the kfc. i don’t want to
go home. i want to make a walmart 
rosary. find a well & drink deeply.
push a shopping cart until we find
each other or else a face that’s good 
enough for tonight. 
you want to get in & out. i could 
spend forever here. counting birds.
a tour bus lets out. it was full
of coyotes. they are looking 
for their teeth too. i suggest
we join them but you just furrow 
your brow. we drive through 
a hole in the sunset. collect pecans. 
start driving again. 

extinction

sometimes the gone animals
talk through the new ones.
i open my mouth & speak dodo
into a microphone at a rally
about trying not to die.
when people ask me,
"are you alive?" i respond in
the old calls of iguanodons
who carried their eggs like
footballs into the fire. when i was
small i became obsessed with
the death of the universe after hearing
a priest say, "it could come any day."
i learned the sun has a pretty long time
to go which i found unnerving.
how many more mistakes & hungers
will this little wedding ring hold?
i sometimes consider if there was
a universe before this one. if those creatures
had dreams of permanence.
if they wrote their histories in
some kind of stone. if when i open my mouth
there are fragments of their longing.
their poems & their catastrophes.
the last tasmanian tiger turned into
a rainstorm in a zoo with only
black & white photographs. i look at her
& i see my own teeth. i reach
into her mouth & pull out a star. 
she says, "do not leave me." i promise not to. 

virtual reality dad

a new experience to 
plug the drain at the bottom
of your longing. there are
several options. you can have
a supportive dad or a wayward dad 
or a dad who is furious
in the dark. the best experiences
are when you combine options
for a more lifelike experience.
he can teach you how to shave. he can
scold you when you are out too late
& the moon no longer has legs.
he can call you when he's drunk
& neither of you know what
to say to each other. in game mode
he can chase you & it can be playful
or a horror movie or 
desperate like, "please do not
leave me." there is a rumor that
the developer spent years collecting dads
in a little satchel. that he spun 
their veins like wool to make 
the virtual reality dad. i wonder 
if he managed to capture mine.
his particular melancholy. the last time
i was home i walked in on him
with his very on vr halmet on.
he was on a beach. he described it to me.
he said, "it's bermuda. it's just like
i remember it." a sweating beer
in his hand. ragged t-shirt. his
beige wrinkled feet & crooked 
toe nails. i love him & i want 
to join him. there is only one headset
so i just shut my eyes. turn on my
imagination machine & swear that
i feel the heat from a tropical sun. 

water pressure

on the night the pipes burst
there were geese in the field. 
the sound of 
a cut morning. water from
the well dungeon. our hands
soaked. our bones like oars
in water. i begged for the water
to stop. the gushing. i thought
the earth was going to flood
& we would have to become
amphibians again. my gills 
like skirt pleats. there is 
never enough time to 
stop a storm. a thumb on
the vein of a hose. sharks in the water.
ghosts in the sharks. i do not
remember which one of us
realized we could cut the power.
we stood there for a long time
just dripping, knee-deep 
in feathers. the geese did not flinch.
instead they laughed to each other.
i waited until you walked away
to weep. i remember why
it had been a long day but these last
few years have felt like rosaries
of long days. the night, always 
rushing to chew on my ear.
i cupped my hands & lifted 
this tiny pool of water. did not see
a warbling face like i hoped to.
just the dark. the earth's belly
meeting air. it is so strange the balance
between gather & burst. 
it took three days to get the water back.
by the time we did, the geese were gone. 

this wouldn't happen if i was a slug

i want a good wet place to feel sorry for myself.
give me the musty damp leaves & the handprint
of a late october rain. this time of year
the slugs around our house are feral.
they start writing prophecies all up the side
of the house. once i saw my name & i tried
to figure out which creature knew me. i never
located them. instead, i took my name off
& beat it in front of the house like a dusty rug.
i have a lot of regrets. my biggest one is probably
that i let myself return to this earth 
as a human. maybe when we were slugs
you were gentler to me. maybe i felt real
& whole & alive. i love you but sometimes
you make me crave being soft & limbless.
dragging myself across the world's hairy tongue.
i make so many bad choices for myself
that i'm not even sure which would make sense
to roll back at this point. the house. the yard.
the birds. sometimes i hear a voice 
from the trees the line the edge 
of the corn field. last night i almost followed it.
was convinced i would finally catch
the slugs talking. planning out their master pieces.
i could then maybe ask to join them.
lay my down sticky & wild. a life without
the pressure to be a little man. the slugs reject gender
& embrace the laughter of the stars at night. 

block city

the one-way street is always working
against me. our cities are full of accidents.
me being one of them. kids are trying to build a city 
from cardboard blocks at the library. they construct 
a police station & i am a stranger & so i cannot tell them
to please tear it down. when i was small
my favorite game was restaurant. 
paper money. a plastic hot dog. life is a series
of larger & larger pretend games that never
quite become real. sometimes i romanticize
the dirt times. i wonder if those might feel
more tangible & loud than whatever we're doing
right now. the city was here before me though & before
anyone in my bloodline. it opened 
& asked us how we were going to imagine
one another. when i walk down hamilton street
i like to see myself passing in the windows
as a faint ghost. inside, people are being warm
& drinking coffee & buying lottery tickets.
there are little police stations & big police stations
everywhere. sometimes i look & i see a city of 
police stations. that is my fault though. 
i do not want to look out & see only the fractures. instead,
i want to see the blocks. the places that can
be easily lifted & stacked & rolled & thrown.
the children probably built hospitals & bodegas 
& delis & pizza joints or at least that is
what i tell myself on my walk home through
a quilt of car radios all trying to sing loud enough
for the last rays of sun to hear them.