slow leak

for weeks that winter i would drive each day
to the gas station at the foot of the mountain to
refill my front tires. kneeling in cold gravel
winter made my skin red & raw. how deeply i craved
to uncover myself. at home again, becoming a mirror ghost.
shower steam. dinner alone at the white dining room table.
more calls for snow. dim light of my television.
a companion. the pandemic had lost its legs. now crawled 
through my body with a kind of loneliness 
only queer people can know. i befriended windchimes
& fed the raccoons my scraps. just to find 
my tires wilted again in the morning.

tea cup language 

everyone has been talking like toppled kingdoms.
i waved to my neighbor yesterday just to see
he had a steak knife for a face. this hunger 
is restless. a stray dog of wooden spoons 
runs endlessly all night. a bird falls into
our cracked bedroom window & i scold you for opening 
too many pathways. i am, in many ways, a sealed urn. 
my ashes are my ashes. i just want to go sit 
with the tea cups. pretend my life is behind a glass case 
where all we can talk about are the names of flowers 
& lost lovers' lips. the cups always reject me. 
they know i'm not one of them. they hear my voice waver.     

one night

you told me you didn't want to be alone
& neither did i. it was raining & the headlights
of your car made pearls of every fall.
i did not pretend to know you. you did not
pretend to know me. there is an intimacy 
only culled from strangers. i only had one chair
in my dorm room. the lamp fell over. i made
a door bell inside your mouth. come home. come home.
your phone lock screen was a sunset. was it
a picture you took? all skin is soft in this dark.
when it was over the rain had stopped. we walked together 
between street lamp islands. then, divided.  

love sick

i walk my dog on a leash into a red room.
i don't actually have a dog. we were on fire
& i touched your hand & i said, "anything
for you." laying awake until the moon was just
a potato roll. dads shuffled in the kitchen 
putting slippers in the microwave. what i wouldn't do
to go back to those first nights. hovering
from room to room. i don't have a dog. the room
was never red but for you, it was. i kissed
every window for luck. then, in the dark, wept.
remembered all the dried up lakes. your coat
standing in the driveway by itself. 

sewer

conduit of my animal. let's mammal 
until we have enough blood. make loud pipe opera. 
gator a family. o my calliope teeth. oil. soap. 
they tell you not to say the word but
the word becomes a body prophecy. once, sun-bathing
now in the banana peel realm
with all the corporation rot. here, babies are still
in their boxes. muck. mirrors. memory sprouts
her antenna. radios croon into footprints.
you talked into the drain, conjuring me.
how could you know my terrors? you did not want me.
you wanted to speak & watch each word grow legs. 

popcorn garden

in a handful, i live like bees.
trees on their iphones say, "i am almost here."
the garden had bad service & brown paper bags.
i hid myself in piles. the movies came
with their butter & police men. 
we watched over & over until the roses
had learned how to speak all our dead languages.
crunching on a mourning dove heart.
kernels for eyes. all i can hear are rustling leaves.
trash bags full of eyelashes. the garden 
stopped weeping & so i started. it went wrong.
so wrong. i convinced myself only i could see it. 

permanence

sometimes a bucket of skulls stares at me
through the walls from where it sits
in the other room. i don't want to endure
like a candle in the back of a raccoon's throat.
but the thing about bodies is there will
always be a new one. i hope my next body 
is a bowl or a spoon. so much depends upon
a mouth's worth of blood. i stop at a gas station
between here & heaven & eat in my car. 
talk to god who hides in the glove box.
at the end of the day there is just the river
& even she doesn't know what her next throat is.

dandelion salad 

i have been hungry for years.
what can fit in my mouth: mountains
of baby shoes, a ceiling fan, & handfuls of pollen.
i dip my fingers in bronze. make a cast of my reaching.
the field has enough to eat but not enough
to make an animal of me. where has your famine
taken you? i sleep walk into a lion's mouth.
turn into a heart or a rib. some days i stop
to pick the weeds, not like a gardener but like
a family member. i dig for the root. missing legs.
little girls. lop-sided apples. plates of belonging.
the table is long & dark. i am in the salad's dream. 

a highway runs through the garden of eden

i strip mall myself & then i feel 
almost better. eat apples in parking lots.
pillow talk with a dumpster. the demons sulk
collecting broken glass & hurling it
at the wrought iron garden gates. when eden
shows up along the side of the road i try
to drive with my eyes closed. i don't want
mythology. at least not anymore. i want 
only to be fed. a stoplight bears fruit.
i don't believe i was ever naked. maybe 
in a past life as a lemon. now, i just open my mouth
& wait for snakes to come. 

towers of babel

sometimes my tongue collapses in on itself
& all i can say is "i'm sorry." language for me
is the bird that breaks against window.
often i open my mouth & find a ziggurat.
the gods do not speak at all. i am trying
to cradle my own babylon. watching those other worlds
in lake water. i stand on ceilings to try to tell 
a truth. prophets burried up to their elbows.
i am not the words that read me & yet often
a single word will be all i can think for a whole year. 
i can't tell you what it is now. that would kill the magick. 
instead i will show you the tower.