pickling the photographs

i told you we missed the exit. drove eight more states
& then we snapped a shot of us beneath the belly
of a giant moose. all of you teeth fell out 
& we had to follow the trail to the valley of death.
i promised if we made it out alive, i would be
your daughter. a straw hat. a strawberry field.
nothing is forever but especially not family.
there is the immediate kissed on the forehead 
& then there is the mutation process. sometimes i think
how many times can i change my gender? i am a flipbook.
watch me rubber ball. this is not a picture of us anymore. 
it's a picture of who we thought we were to each other.

grapevine 

the wallpaper tells me we were supposed to be 
women. i wear a dress with a gun holster.
we fill the bathtub with red grapes
for mashing. i keep saying "girlfriend" 
& alternating between meanings. lover & almost lover.
the rocks in the river know what we came to do.
take our hair down. feed planets to the lion
until he is ready to sleep for another hundred years.
you feed me crystals. rose quartz & obsidian & sapphire.
hard candy-hearted. grandmothers come with glow worms
to light the collapsing house. i never meant to tell
but now look where we are. the world knows. 

reconciliation 

i have been trying to forgive you.
god rides in a little red truck. all the horses
are melted down for glue. we paste macaroni 
to make constellations. i used to be so angry.
that saturday after i had surgery when we sat
on either side of a match box & pretended 
i wasn't a wound. your smile is kneaded bread.
let's not be family anymore. let's be race car drivers
or ship makers. neither of us have the knees or genders
for becoming priests. i scraped my plate. 
painted you a portrait of us in all blue.
the apple falls & falls. i sleep somewhere else. 

skulls

in the bird garden the glass blower wears
a wooden face. is careful to talk sweetly 
to the fire so as to not lose his teeth.
all day he works making skulls: baby skulls
& dead men skulls & possom skulls. 
lets the heat shape each fabulation. this boy
will come to want an apple orchard 
& this person will always crave a balcony.
our wants are this old. yearnings from our makers 
& all the garden birds who whisper in the oldest langauge. 
he holds each skull before setting them 
on a mossy stone to be taken & put to use.

mother-daughter dresses

we put our faces in hat boxes after
the sunday service. everyone worth their soot
had been sacrificed to the father-maker.
at home, the clothe came like a dragon.
enveloped the whole living room. all i was doing
was trying to smile. the mirrors had grown eyelashes.
no more birds for the year. mother got the stork scissors
& promised she would be quick. being a daughter
is always quick. a chair with no legs.
empty dinner plates. sons in the fire place.
no more wood, we must use boys. she said, "now, 
they will know you belong to me."

sky saving

we went out with our ice cream scoops 
to pick favorite pieces of sky.
everything has been burn pile lately
& i don't expect many more years of blue.
the jars we use are worn & the sky goes in
like jello angels. all i want to is enough sugar
to last me the rest of my life. i wish there were still
phenonmenon that still felt certain. instead, 
i boil the jars. caught a cloud & a blush of sunset. 
in this world, there has been too much 
or not enough keeping. my sky belongs to me. 
that is, until it is night & i am lonely again. 

necromancing 

i started with dead squirrels who would talk 
like thimbles all autumn rain. together
we ran the moon out of the sky. we ate bark
& shot arrows at crows. a fork beneath the tongue.
candlelabras floating inside our chests. 
there is always a trail to follow back.
unlike the otherside, this life rings & rings.
i tell a deer carcass "follow the flute in the hallway."
she wakes up. frantic with gunshots & wild onion. 
everyone is folded twice. here is my altar.
here is where we butcher the ghost. here is 
the dance i ask of you, my darling. rise for me. 

a dislike for honeydew

we fed the graveyard chex mix & in return
everyone went home with plastic rings.
i had a ghost for years who begged
for canteloupe. i ate it all without sharing.
saved only honeydew for him. he'd make
necklaces of the seeds. legs on the street
have been wild lately. prone to running.
a stray dog took a bite out of the sun
& burst into flames so now the days are 
an hour shorter. i don't mind the green fruit.
i could eat a whole skull with just a spoon
but i'm not a little kid anymore. 

word of the day

the word of the day is where we met 
to shed our snake skins. is the secret tongue
of spoons. is a grandmother adjusting antenae.
is where you took me when you didn't remember
i had a body. is the headlight of your face.
is the graveyard on the hill looking out at a smug moon.
is digging for stone with bare hands. is your hand
around my wrist as you say, "we are going."
into the woods where words are nothing but carrion. 
is a place to feed. is a watering wound. is how
we thought we would stay alive. is every door you told me 
was a love poem. is opening my mouth, no sound coming out.

innocence machine

i stuck my hand inside the hollow of a god tree
& it came out full of marbles. 
walking through weeds & weathered moth flocks,
i am looking for a place to bury my teeth.
if only. if only. when i was the size of 
a black bear, i used to eat with my fingers.
soon, i will come upon a great box of transmogrification.
it will chew me until i am the purple jelly bean
or else the echo of a sincere bought of laughter.
when was the last time you cut the head off 
a plague creature? the difference between my child-self
& my now-self is now i am polite to my own desctruction.