cow-tipping

the field was full.
in the night i became
only my hands. a scattering
of stars. the moon's sideways grin.
how my father would
sip from green bottles 
until fish lived in his eyes.
the corn field's song in summer
was one of insect legs & violins.
i only wanted to know the animals.
their hooves in the dirt. 
barn's neon glow. walking towards them
thinking, "i wish i was a farmer."
romanticizing roots & dirt. 
the farms around where i grew up
are centuries old. graveyards sit 
in the center of most. crooked-tooth headstones.
i ambled through a little cementery 
to reach the cows. their eyes 
had birds perched inside.
little cages. a downpour of feathers.
putting my hands on their backs
& considering pushing. the plummet 
that could follow. bundles of bones.
my heart coming apart
like a ripe orange. how could i 
have wanted so badly 
to over turn their knees? 
was it my own disasters 
boiling over into finger bones?
i wept with the cows.
all the meat on their bodies.
the jars & jars of milk.
my own body, a crooked-tooth cementery.
a bottle-opener. i asked the cows,
"tell me how you sleep?"
the cows replied, "we do not."
together we ate hay. watched as the moon
folded up like a dinner mat.
somehow, i woke up in my bed.
feet still kissed with soil.
the smell of wet grass
beneath my nails. nothing
was overturned. all hooves earth bound. 
stepping through hushed breeze. 
grass moving with spirits.

eating lava

tell me who you are
when you reach air.
split-skeleton red.
we sit in a circle 
& wait for the earth beneath us
to fissure. erupt.
sometimes, my chest becomes
an ocean. all the cruise ships 
circling. the sea monsters
that will soon devour them.
my hunger is for something 
deep inside the earth.
for heat & fury. are you not
angry today? i wake up 
every morning with 
a snake that lives 
inside my skull. venomous.
i try to coax him out my ear.
this is what we walk around with.
a photo album of parking lots.
when we were magma 
we talked about nothing
but angles. spit into 
each other's mouths.
then there was the blue
of babies. rattling engine.
islands are born 
out of this kind of grief.
i am overflowing. 
imagining the ground i will
stand on. today they tell me
it is going to rain bullets.
tomorrow, i am supposed to
return a call on my answering machine
from a boy whose face was eaten
by locusts. he says,
"anything you can do to help
is appreciated." i take then
a spoon from the silver set
& walk barefoot to the scab.
pick it open to see
the lava. smoke billows
as spoon meets heat. 
a bite of my scalding worry.
i am ready to be fire.

cubing

it was the first
four-sided august.
fruit grew that year 
with perfect right angles 
instead of round as it always had.
people remarked, "this is 
so much easier to stack."
i wondered, "what did we do differently?"
walls of apples & walls of lemons
& walls of peaches & plums.
citadels of fruit. praise effeciency. 
made everything cubed.
cars & weddings & wives.
people used to sit like crowbars 
but then they ate the fruit 
& could only use right angles.
tightness & delight. 
a shape is a way of being.
my shoulders used to
hold a bundle of the earth.
frenzy. every round object 
became too round. rolled 
down our giant hill towards 
the square ocean. all beaches 
that used to be jagged &
jutting, now sharp. 
seam between sand & surf.
i held onto a marble.
a single glass marble i had found
when the sun was still a sphere.
light glinted across its surface.
in the dark of my bedroom
i contemplated whether or not
i should swallow it. imagined it as
a little ripe berry or 
minitature planet. i have always
wanted to devour my life. 
the ghosts that eat planets.
four-walled rooms & four-walled hallways
& the growing towers of fruit.
we are fed aren't we? are we?
i place the marble on my tongue.
i am waiting to be a rowboat 
or a thumb. dear god,
what i wouldn't do to become
one of the hula hoops that used to
rush past on its way to oblivian. 

 

meat garden

i prune sirloin
& shave petals of bologna 
from a great corpse flower.
watering can of my own blood.
i am learning what it means
to worship flesh.
where a cut begins 
if you want to be precise.
muscle & beef & bone.
the pigs that speak in latin
& tell stories about their oldest.
hooves in a pot of water.
the broth that rains in minnows.
we used to speak with greens
in between our teeth. 
but now but now but now.
wilting orchids. those are eyelids. 
to become carnivorous
is a process of nesting dolls.
call me a chicken coop
or a crowded coat room.
elbows planted in the ivy.
the garden gathers thresholds. 
hangs roots from the ceiling. i trade
an ankle for a bulb.
salami roses & pursed lips.
not knowing what to eat & how
to eat it. this is the story of my body.
a mouth in a room of hearts.
cast iron pots collecting grease
& a hand beckoning, "sleep right here."
my stove has a necktie. calls my name.
tells me, "i know you are hungry."
grass grows thick as the hair
on my knuckles. the garden
asks me to eat. 

secrecy 

i am burying all the keys
in the yard. lock boxes 
full of dove children.
poking air holes so they can breathe.
i too was an egg tooth child. 
learning for myself who the sun was 
& why there were so many layers
between me & fresh air.
i borrow a hammer & smash
every digital clock in the house. 
the difference between a locked door
& a shut door is a matter 
of dirt. determination. desire.  
everything i want to tell my parents 
swims in yolks. drinking gold yellow
until it is too sick to speak.
to be a puppet is to ask
someone else to be your hands.
when my father was my hands.
when my hands were my father.  
i never wanted to have to hold on like this.
alone, my hands are pilots
& swans. i unfetter them until
they are no longer mine.
a place i used to pull over 
& give myself palm readings.
when i lived out of my car a yesterday
was a yesterday & a tomorrow 
just glittered in a grocery bag.
if i was telling the truth always
there would be no need 
for the keys or the doors
& especially not the dirt. 
instead, you will take what i give you
& be left to imagine the rest.
my father will be digging a well again
& he will find the skeleton 
of a great bird. will he know
what it means?

galaxy whale

i wanted to be the bone in your soup.
skirts ruffles in between clouds.
oh how my heart came as gummy worms 
to the bowl of your hands. teeth raining 
in sunshower. the whale was everything 
we wanted in a god. he swept the driveway 
free of rusted nails. poured jello 
into every open mold. rosaries of strawberries.
the candy necklace i ate off your skin.
i didn't know how to worship this kind
of divinity. larger than one eye could hold.
spilling over the lip of the flat-earth.
my knees like fish bowls. golden golden golden.
he demanded songs. holding my father's tape recorder
& playing hallelujah like i knew
what an angel was. the telescope
that broke trying to stare down the galaxy.
he gave lungs to sleep inside of. clothesline
with wings pinned up, drying. a kickball game
on the back of a turtle. whiskers against skin.
i said, glory be to the ladel & what it gives.
drinking water from a tree's slit throat.
you have to take what you can get.
loving you was like worshipping opal. 
was that my face i saw in your mouth?
a wicker basket of fingers. i was trying
to pick just one. then, god breeching
& splashing the whole town. drenched in stars
i walked across corn fields until
my legs were fins. silos of grain for winter.
the animals would not go hungry.

diagram of a star

here is the foot print heart & here is
the field of eye lashes. here is
where i entered & shut the door
like a jam lid. breathing in handfuls.
inside, the star told me all her secrets
but i didn't tell her mine. 
all love is lopsided, isn't it?
she took me to the pile of hair 
shaved off in a fit of mourning.
another neighbor who died too soon.
sirens roost like chickens in our life.
lay eggs full of suns we don't need yet
she showed me her collection of belly buttons.
i told her "sometimes i don't know
how i am supposed to keep going."
she stroked my head. took me down her spine
to a hallway of mirrors. she told me
she does not go down the hallway alone 
for fear of wasting the light needed. told me 
everyone has a hallway like this.
i could not find my own & wondered
what this means for me. i don't even have
a vase to put the lily when it grows.
before i left her body we lay awake 
on her day bed of elbow bones. 
she admitted, "i am not wise, not at all."
"neither am i," i said even though
i think she is still wise 
despite maybe not knowing it. i want
to show people my body like this.
almost as a museum. here is my dead pillows.
here is the room of doors. behind each lives
a nest of bees for every wound.
psychologically speaking, i am always close
to opening every door just to see
what happens. i have a purse of doorknobs 
that i like to carry with me if i'm going
to visit a new friend. "forgive me
for forgetting again to be alive."
the star sighs & says, "don't worry. 
you are still so good."

architect

in a galaxy of teeth 
we live like gods.
the stars gather to ask us
for our guidance.
writing in the dust,
we tell them to keep going.
eat the reddest fruit
& lick our fingers clean.
when i plan where a system will grow
i consider only the sounds
those animals will make.
sometimes an animal is 
a dead river. other times
an animal is someone who wants
more than the sky can give them.
i am an animal.
sometimes, i wish i could
give myself rain.
other days i am grateful
to be someone who does the giving.
a particularly needy star
comes to plead for
a sister. i give it to her.
oh to have two suns to believe in.
the brief lives of exoskeletal creatures.
i have a jar of millipedes that
i consult when i need to talk
about legs. going somewhere is the illusion.
i tell the star how & when to turn.
pillows are all full of wings.
taking a single piece of thread
& sewing each galaxy to the next.
imagining trapeze artists
making their way into a different breathing.
sometimes i am tired & i think
"what if i stopped?" the stars would
come to shake me. would plead
& plead. no, there is no going back
to before i had hands. when i was
just a fist imagining rooves 
for bison to live beneath.
a trap door telling jokes.
an attic full of photographs.
i take a handful of dust & 
set to work. the universe wears
only dresses. i put lace on the hem.
the universe tells me with her mouth
open, the gifter of teeth,
"make me a world where everyone 
is not afraid." 

pegasus 

pegasus, you too know what it means
to be fathered. we would
put leashes on trees
& ask them to be horses. 
it never worked.
built a fence of pencils.
the gods emptied their golden chalices
on our heads & laughed. as children
we didn't have enough air.
resorted to breathing through straws.
smoke came & then fire.
sometimes our shoes would fill
with blood & so we'd rinse them
using the garden hose.
underneath the evergreen 
we found medusa's head. a basket
for pine cones. shrugged & wondered
how she might have died. 
her snakes shed, 
becoming thicket-dwellers. 
this is when we first saw you.
trying desperately to fly away,
running & jumping then crashing
into the dirt. sprinting alongside you,
we said, "you are so close,
you are so close." you were not close.
not at all. you asked to see
the chimera & we looked at each other.
no wanting to admit which one of us
it was. this is the kind of secret
brothers keep to their graves.
i will not tell you not even
in this poem. you, pegasus, wept.
said, "i just want to be unchallenged."
heros cut through our yard
to get to the street, walking towards town
where they would buy hard candies 
& diet soda. we brushed you & promised
to be kind. in the kitchen
our father cut new holes in his belt
to draw it tighter. his hair
grew in snakes. pegasus, you asked,
"do you love your father?"
without hesitation we said,
"yes, of course we do." the rim of fear
in each word. knowing he could hear us.
his steak knife. the horses 
he kept in the basement. 
we told you, "you should run away."
dashing again the whole length
of the yard, we got you to fly.
you tried to thank us. your wings
beating, dropping white feathers.
we disposed of them 
after you were gone.
would not want our father to know
you had been here. 
still i kept one. put it under my tongue
& waited eight more years
for it to dissolve.
today, it is gone & i am looking at
my snake tail in the mirror. 

cruise ship

we wrote "paradise" 
on each others backs. it was 
a game we liked to play 
before we walked out
into the millipede street.
in the eigth year of eating bugs
we craved citrus & leather.
you were planning all kinds of escapes.
i tried to keep you long as i could.
carry you to the crying square where
a great grandfather said,
"there used to be cruise ships 
that could come & take you away."
we filled coffins with wheels
& told the neighbor children to get inside.
we called them "cruise ships."
spent a whole night searching
for a flowering weed 
to stick inside as well.
found nothing but reeds & prickle grass.
better than nothing. better than
nothing. i used a stem
to brush your shoulder.
you said, "i think a cruise ship would be
more like a plastic bag than a coffin."
down by the river cows were 
laying on their sides. an adaptation
to survive the sun. i fed them 
handfuls of the sweet dirt.
the kind you could only find
beneath the tree covered in
tin cans. ghosts did that years ago
or so the legend says. the cows loved
the dirt. i said, "i will bring you more."
they were sick of the stinging grass.
everything tasted sharp since 
the clouds started rattling.
a kind of permiating static.
sometimes i would think, "why us?"
visited the grandfather all alone
& asked him, "is this anything
like a cruise ship?"
he said, "oh i never saw one.
it was a story my grandfather told me."
i pictured a field of nothing but
plastic bags full of sugar
& then i asked him,
"what do you think a cruise ship 
used to look like?"