funny bone

knock me until i billow or bust. a brick 
is a portal if hurled at the right mouth.
the gargoyles tell me a joke about 
a boy who thought he could ride the stray horse.
the horse was a graveyard. construction trucks
dig up the street looking for an entrance
to hell. i say, "i have found it."  
laying on my back & letting the grass grow wild
& full of spearmint bushes. i wear my skin
like a shaw. crave something shiny & beautiufl. 
shop online until the moon is static & fading. 
gods, asleep in their arm chairs. i try to laugh it off.

antennae farm

i touch the air to feel for predators.
people who were supposed to love me
have hurt me the most. i grow predictions 
on a shelf in my closet. anything can be 
an altar if you are in need. often spirits stand
on my head & remark, "you have died so many times?" 
i shoo them away like gnats. i don't want to be reminded 
of where my senses go when i lose control of them. 
hear a helicopter of mice above the city then goldfish
talking about graveyards. on the windowsill 
a necklace of ants marches like a seam. my body taught me 
to be terrified of the world's breath. 

rubber duck

i said you could call me as much as you want.
cut a telephone into my tongue. you punched a hole
in your wall when you found out i wasn't home one night
& i thought i was going to be a bomb. in your bathtub 
you called me a pineapple. all the uses 
for a knife. sometimes i miss being 
the one who was eaten. how, in the dark, i could 
look at my wreckage & think "yes they were fed."
a friend tells me the bathtub is full of milk again.
there's an oil rig floating like a rubber duck.
it's pumping blood from a wound. i lay on my back
& wish you were here holding me in your palm.  

my brother & i killed god in the woods behind our house

we only meant to push him off the quarry cliff side.
he was laughing like a skipping CD player. fire pit eyes.
all night he chased us, asking for our real names.
sometimes, he was a mountain lion, on all fours. 
sometimes, he spoke in latin mass fragments. other times 
he limped like our father, kitchen knife
in his hand. a god is a pillar of fear. our quick decision. 
my heart a blueberry basket of no more. no more. we watched 
as he fell. felt terror & relief & what now what now.
in the aftermath, i always crave the trauma again.
thinking, come back & remind me what my body is.
because i am not sure. not anymore. maybe not ever. 

100% recycled plastic

i know this jurassic is a vessel. fern 
& footprint. all the oil in my blood
from years of drinking from petri dishes.
the billboards i pass on the way to confession
have a womb for pterodactyls. eggs in the fridge
dreaming of their factory mothers. more & more
& more. an arrow circles the world like a drone.
when i say "cycle" i mean winter is coming back
with webbed feet. we try to make gods 
of every convenience. once i kneeled outside the 7/11. 
once i ate plastic sacrifice. neon angels. fire blooms 
behind every shut door. today, it rains bottle caps.

barricades

the road ached with lemonade construction as i drove 
past the cementry. one-way streets cat's cradling
through the city's hornet's nests. i'm trying to park.
trying to be a car. elbows falling from a grey cloud.
porch people & their banisters. stray cats laugh
with quarter's for eyes. i am another person
who wants to fry eggs on the side walk. who digs 
graves in the sidewalk & plucks spring onions
from the sidewalk. i hold my steering wheel 
like a microwave dinner as cars put on goat horns.
every house is a pocket book of bills & mint candies.
i finally find a spot. the sky is a pink. i am far away. 

chord book

when i played guitar, my fingers were 
a bestiary. i sat in my bedroom listening to
death cab for cutie, trying to follow
each chord change. at night, i bleached 
the love poems out of my hair. i was sixteen 
& i had too many fingers to keep track of:
salamanders & newts & toads. all of them looking
for water. reading my chord book, i pictured
every neck as a stream. my fingers, skipped stones.
i was never very good. couldn't press down hard enough
on the blood. strummed clumsy as a minnow. still, 
i miss the way i thrummed, animal & thirsty.  

cloakroom

i'm all for shedding what we can.
we sit elbow to elbow & don't talk about
how i am texting a new god this week. 
an uber is on his way. here. parks inside my throat.
outside, the winter has fingernails. polar bear ghosts
awaken to walk the avenues. i never believed
i could truly be bare for you. inside, i showed you
everything i used to wear to funerals: black dress 
& black feathers & black crown. you had a gift for me 
but you left it in the pocket of another coat. i too have gifts 
undelivered. my mouth. my breath. my ankles.
i take your coat & you, mine. 

mood lighting

in the box i always glowed bisexual.
the video game screen had on a single pixel
& i held the remote like a grocery store.
riding my bike on the ceiling. skinned knees as pillows. 
he took out his teeth on by one & said, 
"she loves me, she loves me not." we ate 
nothing but light bulbs for days & i told myself 
soon he will love me so completely i'll forget my gender. 
this is what coat hangers are for: for folding a memory 
like a pair of wings. in his dorm room we talked
as if neither of us had faces. rows of lights 
traced the seams of the room like viking ships. 

re-sewing

the needle talks to me like a baby bird. i need so much thread.
even my desires are translucent. i think i have taken too long
to grow a thick skin. i live a life full of punctures.
sand pours from my mouth. at the bottom of a well, 
i talk to a demon with the same problem. he says cracked words.
i can't hear him over the desert. everyone spends
their last life as a mourning dove. standing 
in a green green lawn & thinking about cranberries
& mothers & wilting vased flowers. the last time 
i was really kissed i asked if i could see his seam.
a line down his back. he said, "right here." i could see 
where feathers were coming out & he let me re-sew it for him.