virtual love poem

i want to put my love
on a hard drive. carry it around
like a lost tooth.
in the distance, there is always
a www. where i can go to talk to
an old mouth of mine.
you used to lie face-up
in chat boxes, telling me 
"all i can see is nuclear."
fire works cross my screen.
it is a celebratory window.
typing. someone is typing. i want to be
the reason for a shut down.
your feet dangling over the edge.
the URLs i wore as anklets.
necklace of search histories.
who isn't dressing for the machine?
our first date. everything i wanted
lived in between the glow 
of advertisements. buying a new 
pair of eyes. washing beneath fingernails.
scrolling into your passions.
carrying hearts like a worm.
another & another. until the blood
is dirt. i sit outside to get
a better signal. plug myself 
into the soil. there is electric
inside every living thing.
virtual in the trees. clutching
a potato to get back to you.
digital bird falling into
a bad link. there we are. talking to
an AI about God. the robot admits
she has nothing at all left to say.
i am the virtual or you are too.
you are still typing & even the moon
has logged off. search engines 
in the basement. i walk down
holding a candle, looking.
trying to figure out
how i am going to touch you
or if i should consider 
the screen enough. warming my hands 
in the internet's light. 
you are not there at all. 
i find a picture of you though
or else it's just
what i want you to look like.
green & with a download. 
in another rendering you will hold me
& i will be just your exit.
once & then gone. windows fall away
like domino doors. i want you.
i want you to be real so badly. 

wish cavern

i'm taking my coins.
in my pocket their faces talk
about promised lands.
manna garland-hanging.
i roll my wants up
into beach towels 
& stuff them where no one else will see.
dreaming becomes more dangerous
each & every pinwheel.
yesterday i set a bondfire
inside a balloon.
god is playing the trick
where the table is set
& the clothe is yanked out
from underneath.
there is a dairy farm where
all the cows spill nectar.
we bring our buckets.
flowers for their eyes.
once i drank a can of soda
full of bees as penanace.
for weeks my throat hummed.
i found honey beneath
my fingernails. i have yet to decide
if it would be better 
if wishes didn't come to me
like depths. drilling deeper & deeper
until they are the home of
skeleton eco systems.
cave fish & bats. 
i take a flash light & go
searching for an off switch.
the basement floods 
with light bulbs.
the coins are not enough
i am sure. i remember though
once i lit a candle 
in a catholic church 
for twenty-five cents.
i can't think of what or who
i lit it for but maybe
that came to fruition.
maybe i gave up to easily of prayer.
then again, i leave spoons
as the foot of the mountain
each & every day. coins tossed
into a rattling void. 
clanging as they go down.
i hear their muffled voices
as they discuss the possibility
that this was for nothing.
i respond, "i can't think like that."
i would just cease to exist.
a potted frolic where i used to be.
my leaves ringing like bells.

particle mother

she is brushing the protons
from my hair & calling me
"sun light." i found my particle 
in a stack of hay. the fair came
to town with pigs the size
of our hunger. all of us
climbed inside one & let ourselves
feel as pink as we wanted to be.
a deflating moon. breathing air 
into a tire with a hole in it.
mother holding a teaspoon
of sugar & asking if we remembered
the ray gun. left in the car
with the rest of our texture.
i don't want to be made of pieces.
she took her rake across 
the back of a dead planet 
& called what came "son." 
detailed plans for a fourth child. 
i am the fourth child. 
bowls of her particles.
glossy like marbles. playing 
the thimble. a dice at the back
of my throat. she was there 
with all the memorabilia:
bobble heads & billboards.
asking us to go panning for gold
in our own bodies. there i was
as a fracture. there is was
as the pearl earring 
another grandmother wore 
to her grave. i want to not believe
in the law of conservation of matter.
give me more than we could ever hold.
my particle mother holding sand
& trying her best to keep it
from slipping out of her palms.
she weeps & says, "this was
supposed to be you." i am also
not quit & never will be "me."
instead, i am the fluctuating sum.
what had been pressed.
the past returning as a new 
masquerade of pen caps 
& ground bones. she is trying
to piece a child together
in her tool shed chest. 
he always comes out a girl. 

clone

we took turns with the madwoman attic
& sewed birds together 
to make angels. i have nothing but
the process of cell divison.
god's pocket knife he used
to section & core us like apples.  
one self with her face made of mirrors 
& another who walks in sneakers 
all through the night. i want to know 
how many of myself i can keep. 
bird cages for my hands. feeding them
fish food & gold shavings. delicate balance
between myself & a certain version.
admitting to a friend i sometimes see
men who aren't there. some of them 
are clones & others are hat men. 
tall as the ceiling--their hats
grazing light fixtures. once, a chandelier
grew from both of our tongues.
miniature guests gathered beneath.
i am always inviting people into my body.
it is compulsive. i meet someone & i think
"i would make a good living room."
the tv is on in the background.
sitting the clone in front to occupy them.
i used to think i would give a clone
all the worst of my life to complete.
instead, i find myself treating her/him
as a child. i brush my clone's hair.
bring bowls of cherries to their feet.
tell them they are beautiful. don't we all
want to hear we are a replica? 
nothing original to our suffering, 
just a new pair of shoes & a new 
parking lot & a new pair of glasses.
i tell her she needs to clear out.
there are inspectors coming
to ensure i have remained whole. 
i stuff my clone in the hamper. 
tell her to breathe through her nose.
she becomes briefly a ball of socks.
the inspectors have teeth for eyes.
one molar each socket. i tell them
nothing at all. my body is 
a highway. coming & going.
they do not find her. i lie & say
"we are safe" even though she knows 
we are not & never. she crawls out
on all fours. i stroke her head
until i am just petting myself. 

loading screen morning

everything was tropical 
in the sweet sense. or else
the backdrop for my life
had leaves big enough
to conceal all my wanting.
i should stay here all day
with beach balls over my head
& try to make sense
of where a soul is stored.
i collect the jam jars
after they are emptied of boldness.
the birds that knit nests 
of wires. hear the old telephone
in their calls. hello hello 
hello. i am not quit there yet.
i could sleep another slice.
drinking a bottle of ocean 
& hearing the whale calls.
so we don't get stuck 
the landscape becomes another 
photograph taken by someone who said
now now now. unearthing your
desire to become a hope chest.
the rings i want to wrap around you.
a knife i carved from soap. 
does no one else hold their whole day
in a cast iron pan. i look for grease
under every rock. soon my brothers & i
will have to reckon with 
who stole whose names. i had
a pocket knife i used only
for cutting out my own tongue.
waiting for it to grow back.
pinwheel sun. expectation for rain 
again & again until a flood 
is our neighbor. until another planet
hunches in the lake water 
drinking her fill. sometimes
i imagine driving my old volvo
up to a drive through window 
to the past. asking for polaroids
of the blue plastic swimming pool.
candy dream eyes tumbling.
the wickedest fruit. i pluck
another hour from beneath the pillow.
your body isn't a visitor quit yet.
instead, i have the graham cracker world
all to myself. i tell the future 
to collect only the smoothest rocks.
i am not sure what i will do with them.
standing by the drawn curtains
air full of spinning moth wings. 

t-rex meat

we started to devour like tourists.
eating the not-ours of the not-ours. 
marshmallows stuffed in our cheeks 
so we didn't forget we were
supposed to be silent. the world
left all her foot prints on the porch.
when i am hungry
i am destroying something.
a billowing dress that can
only be worn once. i am wondering
if it is dangerous to see myself
prehistoric in an off-white gown.
i tell myself i am a presnt-tense man
with all my toolbox ready 
to be put to work. sitting 
at the dig site with a pick axe
in my hand. the dinosaur knew nothing
of how sweet it tasted. savoring fossil
& searching for bird. we are all
descendants of one disaster 
or another. passing a piece of meat.
starting the fire in the middle
of a the past & waiting for it
to climb into day light. nothing else.
that's what you don't understand.
there was nothing else. just bones
& what feathers we could find to chew on.
carrying my talking knife 
down to the excavation. he says,
"you are thinner than you've ever been."
i plung him into t-rex muscle.
tell him "it is time to work."
everything is salt. the trees even.
bitter & urgent. lightning arrives
like sinew. none of us go to bed full.
i ask the knife, "did anyone ever
eat enough?" the knife cuts a knotch
in my finger & says,
"an eye for an eye."

feathers in the yard lead to an eaten blue bird

i miss the way you used to 
make a swing set out of my mouth.
back & forth. catching mosquitos
& promising to make them fireflies.
god is a bread crumb trail 
devoured behind you by song birds.
i found a gun in the attic & tested the trigger
pointing at the window. what if
it had gone off? i wasn't prepared
for more fragments than i already have.
flushing a razor down the toilet
because i don't trust myself.
i walked outside. it was the spring
of our elegy--the one with televisions
& a firepit. social distancing 
meaning six feet in all directions.
bodies beneath the dirt, 
building their pebble collections.
to be human is the gather. i went
into the yard to be alone. sometimes
i used to just walk back & forth
as a child--letting my mind become
a snake nest. i saw a blue feather
& then another & then another.
oh how you used to lay them for me
all around our apartment
leading to the bedroom then to
your chest. terrariums worth 
of tarantulas. i tell you "you are
a different person" but only 
you are not there. you are not
anywhere at all. when i tell people 
how you pulled at my threads 
they say "i'm so sorry" as if
a person weren't always a sum of 
all their parts. i want to be 
the skeleton found sometimes.
a blue bird skull. a wing. 
the trail, like a new limb.
here i come. here i was. here i am. 

current

at night i find the river
that threads each day into the next.
wash my needle in the sink
& sew a patch into my skin
to stop the light from 
leaking out. i tell my friend
across the table, "i wouldn't mind
living forever if i could do it
without my body." scratching tallies
on the inside of a trampoline.
spitting a lily out in the sink
& crushing it into the trash can
so no one can see. i light candles
as if they might destroy the world.
breathe handfuls of rust. 
in the current, boats of ghost travelers
try to decide where & when 
to get off. some unborn.
some born so long ago they are
unsure where they could haunt
if they wanted to. i bought 
a necklace of fake pearls
& i wear it like a soul. searching
for what it could mean to take
the water & do whatever it asks.
bathing like only muses do.
there is a painting of me
in a museum, i am sure of it.
a me from baskets of moons ago.
biting an apple to find it
rotten & seeping with dead leaves.
consider what i would need
to go up stream. a speaker 
beneath my bed plays dream sounds:
crickets & cat birds & bells.
i do not tell anyone this is 
where i go when the hall light
is put to rest. kneeling
& dipping in & out of a cure.
telling myself softly
not to fall in. 

ghost currencies 

trading dead moths & bees,
the ghosts sit in the attic
& talk about tastycakes.
how once they could taste
soft yellow cake & once feel
powdered sugar on their fingers.
the house is made of backwards.
a little boy whose head fell off.
two women with teeth for eyes.
what they don't tell you 
about death is you can grow.
your spirit asking all the questions
it wasn't allowed to in life.
a man with the heaviest boots.
he paces & paces. birds fly 
from his mouth whenever he opens it.
amoung them i sit as a little girl
playing with plastic dinosaurs.
i tell them i understand it is 
hard to hand fingers when there's winter
always coming to pluck them. 
i wear my hair in two pony tails.
the ghosts give me beetles
& napkins & thumb tacs.
wisdom is a caurousel. always coming
back around to the body you are.
not from age or experience 
but from radio tower spines.
i tell the ghosts i want to be 
one of them & they tell me the sun
is made of mandarin orange today.
that i should eat. that i should
hold a penny like a new face
& see what else will open.
they cannot leave the attic
despite my begging. i do not want
to remember my blood & my legs.
i want to be rich in the currencies
of the dead. i want to see
what they do. once, i asked the girl
what i looked like & she laughed 
& said, "a dark sea of pillars."
when i returned i looked in the mirror
& tried so hard to see it.
instead, i just saw a moth 
banging his head against 
a white hot bathroom light.
i waited for him to fall. 
his little windup toy life.
collected him as tender. 

in the bunker

we prepare for collision
or rapture. what words do you use
to describe the coming extinction of milk?
i am leaving footprints 
as i go down. there will be 
trails of bird seed for monsters
to eat as they follow.
stock pile jars of god.
canned holy water. carving our names
in the dirt. tally marks.
my father used to spend
months in the basement where
he would teach the mice 
how to sing pslams. feeding them
bottle caps until they choked.
in the end we are all just throats
held up by wind. on the mountain,
no one would know we are here.
biting our finger nails down 
to skin. remembering when
we didn't know there were 
such things as missiles. 
instead, our hearts were stuffed
with pie tins & soup ladles.
i never intended to keep going.
always imagined being
one of the first to become 
a honeysuckle bush. instead,
here i am. counting lightning strikes
as they get closer & closer 
to my skull. in the bunker,
light is savour only in teaspoons.
i feed you one & you shiver
with delight. i ask you,
"what would you like to see
when we emerge?" you say,
"peanut butter." i say,
"a mirgration of butterflies
none of which are on fire."