teeth-making angels 

once my skull was a venetian vase.
i held lilies in the before-life 
where everything was pooling with cream.
the sun was sugar & gummy-red.
great insects drank & the angels 
sat at sewing machine desks 
to make my teeth. sometimes i will
open my mouth to remember their craftsmenship.
i tell myself often i was constructed.
the thinnest nails. handfuls of clay.
a flock of ancient beings gathered 
to shape my spirit into another body.
they picked me up like a bed sheet.
all the while, fishers of men 
sat with their buckets on the edges
of clouds. i sometimes want to see
all the roots of my teeth. 
hold them in my palm & walk 
all around town. a ritual to summon
the before world again. everyone 
is always talking about afterlife
but i want to take a shovel 
& dig a way back. show me 
the origins of my crooked
dreaming the field of root vegetables.
wishing the carrots were golden. leading back
into a cavefish grotto. sight falling
like lemons. i do not want to be
this tethered to my skull. 
i want to open my mouth
& gather lilies like i once did
in the palace of a feathered god.
they work long into the darkness. 
etching each tooth crevasse & fold.
it is not a toil to them 
but a passion. some work on boar skulls
others snakes & other humans.
when a set is complete they whistle & stand.
a team circles them to inspect.
sometimes i still feel them
staring into my almost head.
that is when i spill. all the stem.
filling me with mouth. their instructions.
"bite down." hard enough to press teeth
into gums. hide them like headstones.
me, a soft little peach. 
the vase full of roots.

taranula chapel

i wanted a place to worship.
became a cricket to sit inside
the spider's hunger.
rubbing my legs together 
& singing about the oldest shade of green.
once, i had a pearl necklace
i wore to every single rendezvous
not knowing it was really a string
of eggs. spiders hatched at once
& consumed me. i was divided betweeen them.
perched in the corner of the room
& waited from memories to come
like flies. sitting alone with a television
& asking it to give me penance.
i buy a gold chalice to fill 
with sugar. instead of sleep,
i prayed until the ceiling opens
like an eyelid. i want to have
a family as myriad as these legs.
i go beneath her. eight pillars of salt.
her thick abdomen as cathedral.
angels that buzz & look for rott. 
holding a candle in my mouth.
the flame, a pair of wings. i learned
how to fly from jumping off rooves.
hearing my bones snap like
stained glass pitchers. sitting still,
the landscape becomes a pop-up book.
not real on top of not real.
god eats plain bread at a table
in the darkest pantry. the pillars move
& are now her legs. her eyes, a bowl
of washed plums. i bite into one
& still cannot sleep. behind my own eyes 
are visions of her lineage. 
church after church, 
filling my bedroom with legs.
i plead with her to show me how to beg 
because what is devotion
but a catelog of bending? 

the moon is talking on tv

we already put our fingers in the honey
haven't we? some days i repeat the phrase
"left to lose" without the "nothing."
pairing my socks & pretending they are
truly lovers. i do not want to take a walk
or pretend a painting on the wall is beautiful.
i have plenty of friends who are planets.
in my chest, i make a patio & then add
a table & chairs. we are drinking
lemonade made from powder. 
we are eating fruit snacks. the planets say,
"let's buy a shiny new." don't tell me 
you don't love a sentence fragment.
i prefer to speak with broken glass
in my teeth. it's more natural that way.
on the television, the moon speaks of 
foot steps & dreams. desires to be 
a field of legs. i tell the moon
even though she can't hear me,
"me too. me too." promising to never take
a skunk cabbage for granted. 
the planets want smaller lives
just like i do. i buy a bird to put
inside a cage. i can't stand it though
& i release him. he flies around the room.
starts bringing letters from dead stars.
they are bitter & angry & say things like,
"it is all over." i crumple them up
& light them on fire. there is too much &
not enough burning. no one asks to be
a star. the tumbling heat. 
everyone gazing. plants hungry
at your ankles. wearing a collar & leash
held by a gravity god. i want to be
the size of a marble. to be in your palm
while you walk down to the river.
wade in & become a dragon. the moon
makes promises she can't keep.
then, pulls the clouds over her face.
the television goes static along with
the sky. my friends set to work 
holding their breaths. i try 
to make a life without enough. 

video game song

the birds spoke dial tones 
all through the morning
& i thought "i should call you."
instead, i put on my headphones 
& pretended the world wasn't
turning to pudding. i took a walk
& ambling along a dog opened 
it's mouth to talk to me even though
clearly i was trying to be alone.
sometimes i walk around with a shovel
in case i need to dig myself
a burrow of aloneness. not yet, robin, not yet.
instead, i listened to the dog who said
"it looks like rain" over and over.
i find only my own repetition tolerable.
the cats were barking. the children 
chattered like squirrels. i never trusted
our parallel nature. how my house
had gone so many years without 
shrieking. who doesn't have a scream
waiting in them after all these years?
i decided my voice was now
a purse. i filled it with coins & phone calls
i could no longer make. a duck call.
a deer whisper. i wanted you here
so that i could apologize in a language
neither of us could understand.
it is probably best done like that.
at a certain point all words are just
kinds of water. frost on the window.
dew on the grass. i went up the mountain
insearch of a lion. needed to hear
what she might sound like.
reached her lair, stepping over the bones.
she had your voice. just like
i thought she would. i said, "i should
call you." she said, like you did,
"i just can't do this. i can't."

nesting

i wanted to build a mobile
to live over my head like afterlife.
a lady who falls from the top
of the building each night
is trying to be a swallow.
i fill my pockets with garbage 
& glass shards from the sidewalk.
sometimes i fantasize about 
going out every morning
& collecting trash. what makes 
a neighborhood beautiful?
the trash cans fill with scissors.
i buy another lighter & flick it
as if i might be able to make
a sun all on my own.
my lover tells me every night
that the world will be over
in thirty years. i turn off 
my listening. i walk out to
the nearest swing set & pretend
i am a lost girl. more garbage.
i'm collecting for a future nest.
that's how the birds are coping.
they stuff doritos bags 
between twigs. they gnaw on
fractured chicken bones.
raise their young within 
a torrent of brevity. tell them
"tomorrow we will be air." 
a good breeze is full of centuries
of birds. i wish i had that lineage.
hollow wishes & a grandmother 
who didn't live like an obelisk.
instead, i am human & making a nest
isn't in my blood. i watch the birds
to learn. pick up a shattered cell phone
that keeps ringing. i just want
to answer. on the other end
i picture of a room full of pigeons.
lets never go for a walk alone.
at night, the park is full of sneakers.
you sleep cradling a pillow
as if it were a baby. you do not know
you are doing this. sense memory
or something else. i toss rocks
in the creek. i will come home soon
with what i found.

my father's birthday

he opens a his gift to find
a butchered rabbit. we have been
hunting all our lives for something
to sacrifice to him.
sometimes i cut down trees
& i call him & tell him what i have done.
he shakes his head like a bowl
of marbles. we used to go fishing
in the dew-slick summer morning.
stuck potato rolls to the end
of hooks. fished little girls
out of the lake & put them
in the cooler for later. a beer can holder
with his name on it. the basement where
he used to carry the hooks 
to clean them. i cut my hair myself
& watched as the pieces 
would turn into moths. my father
he hates being alive. sometimes 
i'd catch him standing on the roof
& trying to jump off. only, every attempt
a flock of crows would catch & save him.
he is a year older which also means
i am a year younger. soon i will be
just a pair of shut eyes.
we turned over rocks in search 
of pair tongues. something to say to him.
i write "son" on the soles of my feet.
walk as long as i can until
the words are rubbed off. he hunches 
his shoulders like a boulder.
eats from the cake using his hands.
as if it were a carcass. as if we were
vultures & not brothers. there comes a point
when your father is your brother
& your brother is a head of cabbage.
someone sits me on the kitchen table
& works to pry each skirt away.
i am washing his shoes in the river.
he is sleeping like a drawer full of candles.

dressing 

the trees are transitioning.
they are not calling their parents 
& they are not asking 
if their voices sound real. spitting flowers
at the sidewalk. some are taking hormones
& asking others if they look different yet.
i go outside to join them carrying baskets
of my clothes for them to choose from.
hats & jeans & ruffled dresses.
i help dress them. three hats here.
a velvet skirt. a boot on a branch. 
wishing i had a burrow i could have
climbed into where only rabbits
could see what a gender could do to a person.
i'm at the point where all i can think of 
is dressing. what shapes are living
beneath my skin. when i hear "man"
i picture triangles. woman, circles.
myself, a rhombus.
the trees are walking down to the park
in their new clothes. they want
to wash their faces in the creek. 
i used to take off my shoes by the edge 
& wade in. my baptism of birds & bees.
my gender would wash off & i would 
have to spend all night gluing it back
into place. the trees decide 
they want more than this. they want
faces & lips. i tell them that gender
is not housed in the face but
in the fingers & they already have those. 
sun across their shoulders.
they give me leaves. cough up mulberries.
talk about flying to another country
where a surgeon will know 
how to dig the gender they want
out of their bark. we all are doing 
our best gender at any given moment.
except for me. i am tired 
& watching the trees makes me feel exhausted.
i tell the trees my gender is just
over-worked. i want to bury it 
in the yard at their feet. maybe they can
pull it up through their roots.
make use of all my night aches & headlights.
i tell them the best thing i have ever done
was be trans. they lift me up
like a collared shirt. put blossom 
in my hair. i feel my gender again
like a knot of green. a bird's nest.
a beautiful little something. then, gone. 

bobbin keeper

when my fingers were tangerines
i kept a heart of needles 
to pull from. chopped down a tree
& feasted on the wood. 
where do you keep your smallness 
& your sturdy need to mend?
i tear holes in the ceiling
just to fish for stars.
squid as bait. waiting on a dock
made of thread. on days like this
i look back on my life in a planetarium.
thousands of miles away a girl
is trying to sew a mountain.
or else she is crossing a highway 
to look down at the town 
with binoculars made of dead fish.
wine glasses repurposed as 
snake burials. she believes she can
one day sew all of her clothes
from nothing but dead birds.
finds a dead deer to crawl inside.
warmth is something earned.
opening a window to let all the newts in.
they sprawl out & drink heat.
my life fits in a trunk.
underneath a staircase. in the basement
next to boxes of mildew adorned
holidays decorations. there, 
i find a single black thread bobbin.
place it under my tongue.
the next person to hear me 
will have their feet stitched 
into the downy floor of my orbit.
i want to be loved by 
a complete stranger. i want them
to carry my little voice
in the wallet until the day
they are dead birds too. 

turbine

making butter from the wind,
we stand in the forest of mills. 
i want to be the electricity 
that comes from dead ancient.
i put a light bulb to your tongue
& it glows enough to last the night.
i am always just trying to reach
the next morning. 
a fire made of lizard tails
lives beneath the house.
we will sonn have to be renewable  
or, in other words, some of us
will live in the treadmill garden.
some of us will hold a microphone
to the sun. i am trying to become
a city all by myself. open my mouth
& make a tunnel. transit with 
carnations. a spearmint bush growing
out of control. there are
more than enough highways. 
i make one into a belt. crossing
bridges between eyes. i have
a lighter for the kindling. 
i have a bowl to catch the baby.
melons that started as caught breaths.
all i want is to live without
fear of the next. next sugar.
next house. next night. next bed.
the birds no longer migrate because
of the huge turbines. if they did
they would be sliced into 
smaller & smaller creatures.
field mice say a prayer.
a cat licks her paws clean 
of all decision. we drill a hole
in the backyard looking for water
or oil, either will do. we find neither.
just bones of another planet.
use them to build a generator.
anything can be diminished
to a brief flash of light. in the oven
perches an alarm clock. 
i pluck a turbine to find
it's just a pinwheel. we are 
going to be so hungry by the time
the moon is ripe again. 
learning to feast on rain or
wild onions. the outlets are talking.
i shove a plug in each 
to shut them up.

rabbit's foot harvest

we must take control
of our own luck. in the graveyard
we look for rabbits recently returned
from their convening with the dead.
pick a set of rules & believe in it.
slaughter on fridays. on fridays
when it rains. on friday the 13ths.
i had a friend once who had
a purple rabbit's foot. 
she wore it as a keychain on her backpack 
& told me there was a rabbit limping
in the yard, watching her, waiting
to steal the charm back. aren't we all
waiting to take a limb back?
soon it will be a full moon or 
a new moon. soon there will be 
a cross-eyed man to do the deed. 
shape-shifting witch who walks 
along the edge of the cornfields
with only one hand. what does it mean 
to steal from another's body to keep our own?
all i want is assurance that tonight
the world will not swallow me.
i want to eat oranges. i want to sleep heavy
& easy so i create a ceremony from which luck 
will fall like a dead tree.
shot with a silver bullet. the rabbit
always running from the meanings
of her skeleton. hiding in her hollow 
& counting her legs. one, two, three, four.
sometimes my eyes fill with fingers 
& i am also a rabbit with four feet
for the taking. then, limping in my friend's 
front yard. once bones are taken they are 
never our own again. i put my finger bones
in a box & set it on a porch.
the house was full of rabbits.
apologies almost always come 
too late. it is not a friday. the moon is
thin & haggard. we buried the purple foot.
did not cry in front of each other
but later wept in our homes
thinking of the animal circling the house
craving the body she one had.
maybe luck is always something taken.