butter tooth

when i try to catch 
the barbed wire, i spread
like hot butter in the mouth
of a dog. i want to keep
my sculpture when 
the ice time is over. 
never give in to the sun.
our genders used to be so long
& shiny. now they get neat.
family houses in an street lamp military. 
i am told there are still holy places
that we should just not speak about.
i discovered one as a child.
all my hair fell out & i lost
the names for my brothers. my gender
turn into butter & i ate hundreds
of loaves of bread with it all alone
in the attice with the window open
to welcome back any bats that wanted
to join me.
the thing about the self is that
it is nothing without a knife
& somewhere to lay down.
i used to call my aunts & then
i stopped. i wonder if they would
even recognize my voice with my
buttered vocal chords
& the sacrifices i have made
to the gods of the well. in the miracle
of the loaves & the fishes, did they eat
the bread dry or was it decadent?
did the witnesses, years later,
smack their lips & taste their holy meal? 
i feel that way about peanut butter crackers
eaten on the turnpike. always more
than you bargained for but never
quite enough. i keep a butter knife
in my purse just in case. 

car sleeping in the rain

did i ever tell you about my
rocket ship? it smelled like
cigarettes & it lived in a wendies parking lot
across from a redners & across from
a daycare where the children would scream
like confetti. i slept in the back seat
which was never quite enough room.
still, i liked to curl up. pretend i was
returning from a trip to the moon
or from my grandmother's. i loved
the long drives especially when
my mom was at the wheel. she was better
at radio spinning & opening windows
& games. i had a tiny moon roof
in my car. i cracked it halfway
when the rain came. made 
impressionist paintings of the neon store lights. 
i wanted so badly to be on my way somewhere.
instead, my car was still. lingered
even as the parking lot emptied. i was 
always afraid someone would come
& tell me to leave. where would i go?
this was the last stop on a journey
to the next star. no turning back. 
when i felt especially wild, i would crack 
the front window just to stick my hand out
& feel the rain. i acted as if i had never
witnessed the sky break open before.
all my senses were different when i lived
in the rocket ship. i lingered on the taste
of pink bubblegum when i bought a pack
& chewed the whole thing. rubbed my fingers
across the floor carpet to feel the softness. 
when it came time to get up & go,
i turned the engine on. sunlight sweeping away
the clouds. droplets on the windshield. 
each one with a little rainbow on its shoulders. 

mega church

at the mega church, everyone had 
bouncy-ball faces & nice teeth. my boyfriend loved
to worship a spectacle. i guess i cannot
blame him. isn't that we have always done?
my highschool boyfriend,
we'll call him hunger, church hopped
our last two years together. each visit
felt like an audition. a room of inspector faces.
they could not tell what kind of girl i was
& truthfully i could not tell them either. 
i longer believed in god, which was a relief.
this was something i did not tell hunger.
i always believed that the churches could smell it on me. 
my desire to be somewhere or someone else. 
hunger was always going to me in search of
truth. my body became a field. burst blood vessels.
an empty room. at the mega church 
the seats were movie theater. hunger devoured
all the sick words some preacher spat into the air. 
the room was huge. full of more people
than even went to my high school. i searched faces
for another person like me. someone who 
ended up in a sea of flashing tongues & halleluiah.
i am not convinced that i was alone but
i did not find anyone else. instead, all the eyes.
their pocket-watchness. on your first visit
they gave you a free donut. i did not touch
that glazed halo. instead, i wrapped it 
in a napkin while hunger at his. he held 
my hand & said, "we could get married here
& so many people would come." i managed
to not return but he did. i wonder if 
he ever stopped being hunger. if all the nights
without a single window were worth it. 
if there is a piece of me scattered in 
the stained-glass window of 
all those churches he took me to.  

chicken nugget

i fear being consumed 
in unrecognizable ways. there is
a dinosaur who comes on our
back porch at night to weep.
i feed him dried fish & beef floss
when i feel extra bad about it. 
i sometimes eat veggie chicken nuggets
which is an absurd gesture in itself.
eating the idea of a chicken. i wonder
how & where people are eating 
the idea of me. my bones are 
really much thinner than anyone 
would assume. i know there are meals
in which my people are made into
little mystery shapes. in a sense though
i think the united states is a project
of chicken nuggets. i have in fact
sat at the same highway intersection 
at hundreds of places across the country.
in ohio in a mcdonalds lobby 
all the machines were chirping. it was
the only food for miles other than
the gas station grazing. the ground itself
is made from chicken nuggets & when we,
the chickens, cross the road we are
crossing ourselves. on tiktok someone says
that the chicken crossing the road joke
is supposed to be about a dead chicken. 
i am seldom hungry anymore. instead,
i crave a body. to be butchered 
in the proper way, animal to animal.
this place is founded on manufactured ease.
a story of buried pain. i collect feathers
for this reason when i find them. chicken feathers &
turkey feathers & the occasional feather
from a songbird. a reminder that we
are not just meats but color & air. 
that even if the sky does not hold us 
it bends down each morning to say,
"as long as we have blood, we cannot
all be undone." 

can kill a fellow

my dad taught me how
to catch snakes. you have to grab
right behind their jaw.
he showed me how to check the colors.
a rhyme about yellow & black
& red. the snakes' bands expanding to lash us
together like twigs. the tall grass
around the duck pond hushing
from an august breeze. i do not know why
we caught snakes. we always just
released them when we were done.
our hands trembling in the grasp.
my father's hands were like stones.
callous & unmoving. a jaw of their own. 
mine, still soft. i loved the texture
of their snakes. smooth & otherworldly.
once he did catch a venomous one.
she writhed. her tail lashing a language
into the air. i touched her & she bore
her fangs. daggers. her eyes like pricks
of night. i was not scared of her at all.
i felt sadness envelop me. i begged my father
to let her go. of course, he did.
we walked her around to the far end
of the park where no children went.
it was the ghost place. somewhere the snake
could live unbothered. i was afraid
that when my father let go 
she would turn & chase us but she
did not. instead she took her language
& our human-mouth rhyme with her.
we didn't catch many snakes after her.
moved on to bull frogs & then to fish. 
i turned into a girl & my father into a man. 
the sun a rubber ball. the night, a sea
of snake eyes staring down at our hands.

remix

the floor is rotting out 
in my parent's bathroom. 
we will be staring down
into the living room.
i remember once as a kid
i filled the bathtub up
to the brim. made myself 
a soup bone. spilled water & 
it leaked through the ceiling
soaking the couch where my father was
trying to get the football players
to hear him. sometimes the remix
is better than the original
which is either a joke about 
me being trans or a joke about
the sorry state of the radio
or the truth about aging. 
i am going to be thirty soon
which i never intended. 
sometimes in my parent's house
i will consider all the work
that needs to be done. the wires
my father strung with his friends
that short circuit & sputter. 
the stairs that have rotted 
& broken off the deck. recently, 
they redid the living room.
painted the walls a deep blue. 
i still hear the orange & the green
humming beneath. the first 
song is always there. a hand inside
a glove. our house, always 
the doll place where we tried
to become humans. plates broken
on the speckled red kitchen floor.
their shards turning into teeth. 
turning into mountains. we are people
who keep as much as we can
& as little as we can. the remix maybe
not the art of change but the art
of preservation. my remixed face
& my remixed mouth. if i am 
being honest i don't want anything 
to change in my parents' house. 
if i am being honest i want the hole
to bloom in the floor. to see 
right through this creature. my family
there, still watching the tv.
our little terrarium at the edge of town. 
 

shot gun wedding

i do not have enough canned food.
we are, despite all our efforts,
probably not going to make it very far
into the apocalypse. my grief has 
a suitcase full of chocolate coins.
my grief has a little bug cage where
all the caterpillars never change. 
this week the weather channel boasted 
that we were in "peak color" for the season.
trees are showing their teeth. getting red
in the morning guts. you suggest in passing
that maybe we should get married.
when i first met you i was sick 
with romance. i planned so many weddings.
in the forest. on a boat. made of deer.
flowers falling from a tear in a cloud.
now, i feel like if we don't do it
we won't have the chance. i am opposed
to all rituals that the state peers in on.
i believe then it might no longer
be a ritual. still, i am hungry for the life
which i do not have. the hole in our fence
is where the leopard slugs come with
their flutes. a wellness influence 
is selling detox kits again. she's in the windows
& then laughing in the chimney. 
you bought me a ring when we first met.
it has a break right at my finger's neck.
i consider how a promise is not 
an isolated phenomenon. instead, it happens
in the context of the burning world. 
i have become less & less sure that we 
make choices. or, at least, that people
like us make choices. i guess though if 
i am going to be backed into a corner i am glad 
to be backed into a corner with another
violet creature. i dream new rings for us.
ones made of headlights & wind. 
i want wild vows. no cheesy, "i do"
instead the old language of mountains.
a stillness that fills each other's sky. 

sample cup

i no longer want
to eat my life from 
a sample cup. i want a bowl
we could sleep in. one that's been
in the family for generations.
chipped ceramic lip. 
i want it full of birds & edible flowers.
i crave a plate to fit my house.
a fullness that doesn't leave when
the lights go out. we drive to costco 
to take a fluorescent bath
& to smell the roasted chicken. 
i don't even eat meat but i marvel
ovens full of bird choirs. all the bodies
holding sample cups. the workers
portioning out raviolis 
& beef tallow chips. whatever new 
morsel they want to feed us.
we take as many as we can.
a seagull meal. candied pecans 
in our teeth. the cups, piling to make
a little brief castle. a place where
everything arrives as just a bite.
i never leave full. i try to think of
the last time i was full. it was a christmas 
so many years ago. night came 
with licorice. all the lights 
in the world were bone & bright.
we ate from paper plates. i think it was 
a roasted chicken. my fingers 
in the sinew & grease. a canned pear.
all three aunts still alive. the tart
crabapples from the tree at the end
of the driveway. i fell asleep 
on the drive home. i steal an empty 
sample cup before we leave costco.
i hold it up just to see. even from
this far away the moon will not fit.
i decide to keep the cup & use it to find out
when we all have enough. i do not want
my beloveds to have to hang on
to just a taste. 

echo aching 

my voice doesn't come back to me.
not even when i find a valley or a gorge.
instead, i am met with a car horn
or sometimes a window-eyed elevator.
i don't know why i so badly want
my voice to return. after all, to be a creature
is to be an artist & to be an artist means
to let go. to feel all the butter leave you
& glisten in the mouths of strangers.
still, i have a dream where i speak a poem
into a woven basket & the poem
crawls hope. sings itself to me. no longer
becomes my poem but the world's.
finally a lullaby. a place to rest inside of.
i am not so big-headed that i think 
my echoes are best. i would take
the return voice of a crow or a dog 
or a lover. i find our world is full of 
less & less returns. migrations turned
into escapes. still i am reminded that
after decades the salmon still knew
how to come back when the damn 
was broken. the water still wanted 
to lick our faces. maybe the echoes i make
are on a longer journey. will return one day
when i am part of the soil & the trees
i feed develop a faint affinity for spoons
& early mornings. then, the poem will
come back. tangle itself in the hair 
of a neighbor who might pick
her free teeth with the words. 

brittle

i don't know anymore if i want to be stronger.
i have swallowed so many rocks. tasted their
edges. fingers from a low cloud saying,
"just one more & then everyone is golden."
the one more becomes a city. becomes a mountain
i have laid for myself to climb when 
i need to reach my thoughts. desire is murky.
like looking through a beer bottle at the sun. 
what is a star & what is a street lamp? instead
of all of that, i would like to be brittle. not soft.
i do not want to fall off the bone or mash
in someone's teeth. i want to fracture imperfectly.
the texture of dry rice noodles & my grandmother's
fingernails from years of clawing days open.
i want my body to be a measure of the too-much.
a place for everyone to stop & share our breaking.
the mountain turned into a pile of glass 
for the light to play in. i open my mouth. give 
the birds a place to weep. each break becoming
a giving. how the arms of trees fall to give
the mushrooms their lungs. how the teeth 
of old dogs drop to become rosaries. 
let me then be a breaking place. the crusts 
of warm bread. mermaid's purses. a spoon's shiny hip
to fracture the face of the thinnest sugar.