fridge magnets 

the morning comes in a take-out container
& in the kitchen the bugs are already planning
what radio signals they want to send
to my head today. when i was little 
our fridge was a worship den.
gods of grapes & milk. we watched 
as everything holy emptied & 
the whale carcass sat in the room
until next week. i want to be proud
of something. once, i went to a bible study class
for a boy i liked. i don't know what i was thinking
but all the men talked over the girls
& they were gushing about how terrible
pride was & all i could think about
was how much more proud i wanted to be
to spite them. i want my life hung
on the fridge of a biblically accurate angel.
with all his/her eyes she/he would say,
"here was someone with an extra face."
now we just have memories as magnets.
your grandfather. fragments of words
often arranged yet again by the bugs.
what i really want is to crawl inside.
how you ever been truly in love with yourself?
i was briefly for the first time this year.
i threw a stone at a mirror
to see it shatter. all my teeth 
in the fragments. i was so beautiful.
even the bugs agreed. i asked,
"does this mean i am free?" they laughed 
& crawled all over the fridge door.
"not so fast," they laughed.

staircase mother

when i came out as trans 
a family member told my mother
that kind of thing is caused
by distant mothers. 
we purchase the oldest tv 
& find a colony of rabbits inside.
only, they are only the size
of thumbs. leave the tv in the yard.
static. mosquitos. gems of blood.
i measure distance in licorice
& my mother has always been 
just a rope away. ants come
& try to eat our bones.
love is not the thing that heals
but the thing that comes
from the healing. 
again my father is
the artist & spends his whole summer
in the yard carving faces into the trees.
i am often in love with objects 
but not in a captialtism-will-make-me-whole
kind of way but more like
this object is alive. haven't you ever seen
a tea cup winking? a garbage bin grimace?
as a child i had so many mothers
& none of them were distant.
the staircase who, when i was alone,
sun like piano teeth. the kitchen table
rife with glorious stains,
promising to give my pig tails.
i am encircled by the dreams
of table saws & cheap paint brushes.
the staircase is taller every single day.
i measure distance in moments 
it would take for us to start
a fire here in the middle
of the house. i would say,
"we need this to survive"
& the microwave would say,
"blessed be" & my mother & i would 
find a song that could be sung
buy both of us by the flames.
our flipbook shadows. my gender 
a pair of scissors to run with. 

house plant

one by one i invite the willows inside.
they had begged for days to become 
house plants & each day i said,
"there is no room." i did not mean
inside the house but rather in my heart
for another being that might catch fire.
they brought records. listened
to smooth jazz in the sun room.
swayed & told stories of being
jump ropes. i tell them about how
i used to be a spoon in another life.
stirring. that is why i'm always stirring.
the willows want to bring friends.
the white pine & the red oak.
i cannot say no. i cannot turn
anyone away. for so much of my life
i have been the cut-back plants.
watching my head turn to dust 
& waiting for another to grow back
in spring. there is not enough help
for all the hurrying. pine needles 
on the floor. we eat girl scout cookies
& crab apples. we sing a round
of row row row your boat. there isn't
enough hours in the day to devour
what we need. i need butter 
& a candle made from tree sap.
i spit sugar cubes. save them for later
to place under lovers' tongues.
the trees continue. curl up next to
the potted basil & the succulents
in their tea cups. we no longer need
the windows. we are our own windows.
i ask a holly tree. "what is the world?"
she laughs & says, "i do not remember."

power outage 

when all the television are floating
in the river, will you come with me
& light a match inside my skull?
will you tell me i am the moon
even though the moon has been
portioned out for food?
we sat by the black snake river 
& ate our morsels. the moon tastes like
whatever you need. mine tasted 
of rubber & honey. i put the light bulb
in my mouth & dreamed of the sun.
nothing. nothing at all. did you ever think
we would become cave fish?
i saw our memories like shadow puppets 
on the wall of childhood bedrooms.
a sleeping bag eats a childhood whole.
cans of cannellini beans
eaten with a metal spoon.
i had a cell phone for the first day
& we clutched it as if we might
walk through the screen 
& into a digital heaven. then,
it was gone & we walked & walked.
feet turning to hooves & then fins.
whole city in its bathtub. 
fires that wouldn't light.
backyards overun with boots.
the train burrowed & refused
our company. i do not know 
who i am in this raspberry world.
please though, stay with me
& tell me all the stories you used
to feed to the dogs. tell me 
your licorice secrets. i once
was a girl. i once cut locks from my hair
& burried them in the yard 
as an offering to the dead goldfish.

invented languages
             after diane seuss 

i open my mouth & a bucket 
of ice comes out. there must be a way
to admit i was once a paper bag
full of ripening bananas. 
take all the trips you want,
your belly button will still 
be waiting like a push-pin. 
when i sleep on your tongue i always hear
exactly what you really wanted to say
which was, "i love you too,
i love you too, i love you too."
why do we deny ourselves the sugar bowl?
instead i take the ice & make
a dialect only we will understand.
here is your tall glass of lemonade. here
is your summer. let's not be hasty though
there is time to come to dislike
each other's breath. for now,
let's be the lexicon of dust.
from between my teeth a new thread
emerges. one i can use to tie 
all the birds to the ground for the night.
under this moon, no words will go missing.
we will remember every ocean 
we've ladeled fish from to make
children out of. i want again
the kind of speech 
the burns down row houses.
dark of a good collision. 
do you really want me to talk?
because i will talk & talk until 
i am deep in the tongues of moss
& soil & water & you will be there
wondering about how i heard your dreams
so loud & clean. i have a daguerreotype
of all your musings. you eat ice
with your fingers.

parking lot sea gulls outside china king buffet

today the earth is a powdered donut.
throwing watermelon rinds at the sun
to worship. we come to reclaim the wild
of an afternoon. i come barefoot
to the broken glass. a tea bag in my mouth
painting my soul amber. the bread comes
presliced. communion is communion is communion.
contential breakfast served for everyone
with a pair of headlights. the daughters 
are birds & they don't take no for an answer.
all my genders turn unruly. whatever we must do
to secure the dumpster when the celebrations
have turned to funeral pyres. 
i count birds until my fingers undergo 
mitosis in the process. we come to catelog
each others dreams. i am hungry 
in a way only the birds know. their ocean is
a jello tray. their mothers, garbage 
& junk & unwanted skulls. this is where
i come from: cementeries beneath cementeries.
an antenae picking up the video games 
of whales. signals from alien spaceships 
unsure of where to land. the open sign says,
"here is where you can feed your monsters."
there is no where to park because 
dinosaurs are roaming across all the spaces.
neon promised atrician. i dwindle
in the way the human tail did. less & less
until it was just a comma on a life.
let's eat all we can. 

trophy maker's lover

some nights when we cross pathes 
in the wild dark of our home
i see him as the golden man,
the statue atop a parade of pillars
& glitter. what does it mean
to be triumphant? he kneels
in the shadow of his idols.
moves thumbs smoothly across 
stickers. presses down glue
for plastic shards of joy. 
his creations are usually sold 
in bulk. colonies of golden men
& women. every so often
he makes a trophy that he loves so much
he cannot part with. then, it stands
in the corner of our room
keeping vigil over the talk
of old lovers. we met years ago
when the moon was still canteloupe.
now, i worry i am feasting 
on plates of ice cubes. 
there are always victors. more
& more. children & men & girls 
& people with hungry faces.
all the houses where my lover stands,
a golden man atop a temple.
always, he is telling them,
"look how worthy you were."
is it selfish to want him
all to myself? his study thumbs.
we drink each other dry.
turn out the light. his knees.
my shoudlers. the night's archetecture.
i want to whisper to him,
"tell me i am someone. not with
plastic gold but with your mouth." 

maximalism 

of course i am haunted by
the tombs of kings. 
their golden bounce castles 
& jupiter guitars & bones
of all their lovers
as if you could
hold on tight enough
to make the big dark television
forget to reap you.
i am a disciple of too-much-ness.
give me a graveyard of silver shoes 
or a wall of carnival masks
to try on. we go to the goodwill again
because it is raining & we are dragons.
what keeps me alive is the thought
that treasure will give me a place
to hold my heart for the night.
it always is seeking a new nest.
i do not know
what taught me this kind of longing. 
i do not think of it as
"filling a void" but rather as
"giving the void a home."
i had a lover once 
with clean empty walls 
in her apartment. i thought,
"this person is too alive 
for me." she had a land line.
she ate kneeling on the floor.
i never saw her again.
but even the animals 
can be like me. i found once
in the deep forest 
a nest of bells. how the bird
must have harvested 
these little voices. 
am i a tomb then? or else maybe
like the bird
just a nest
a hoarder of bells?

pie lattices for an abandoned life 

i folded our escape ladder 
from dough. all the bakers 
were smoking on their porches 
& dreaming of their mothers.
an oven is not a destination,
it is a tongue. an airport. 
strip malls & diners flicker there.
wooden knuckles. laying hand
over hand over hand. i used to
capture doves to sell them
to the moon for their paleness.
bird eyes in a bowl alongside jewels.
haven't you ever bitten into 
a piece of cake & found
the baby? right there with his face
a cathedral? where we lived
there were bars on the windows.
security systems with names like
"haven" & "vigil." don't you remember
how i would hold your hand 
& feed you blueberries 
until you were sick? no?
or was that another lover?
it is a shame to lose track
of your own skin. i want someone
to love me enough to weave 
a blanket. once, my mother made one
& i lost it in a fit of yolks.
what i am trying to say is 
there wasn't enough rhubarb
or strawberries or peaches.
there wasn't enough blueberries 
or apples. we had to eat 
one another. the bakers are
still smoking on their porches.
bells ring to signal the death
of another day. nothing is lattice 
at least not tonight. 
i kiss you only when 
you are not looking & you
do the same to me.

house wife

i put gender in the casserole dish tonight.
then, my heart is in the crock pot if you want
a taste of museums. tell me what a windowsill is for
& i will tell you where the space shuttles 
launch from. in the television room
everyone floats two inches off the ground
but i am the only one who notices. 
mine is a gender of vigils. of noticing 
where my body is asked to move. microwave children
with their steam laden faces. when the mailbox
is decapitated by a neighbor boy 
with a baseball bat, i stand in the yard
mouth open, waiting for the world to come.
a door has little to do with the inside
& more to do with that is on its way. 
when dealing in hauntings, it is best
to light a candle or a match & not a flashlight.
i fill the nursery with bananas & telephones.
someone will call soon. someone will be sweet soon.
let's not be afraid of the next gender 
walk into. instead, let us feast on soup bones.
let us wait for everyone to vanish
into their hungers. car horn. dimes. then, we will 
go to the basement to feed the beast.
fingers like dolies. a house dress. apron.
wooden spoon pounding against the wall
all on its own. it's craving salted water. pasta.
meatloaf. lover. lurid. fork scraping teeth.