heaven drive-in movie theater 

i didn't mean to be fickle.
the angels come to burrow
in the fresh dirt. seasons come
like worms. i walk the miles needed
to find the drive-in where a movie
of flowers blooming plays
forward & back. i was told by
a dead deer on the side of the road
that i was dead too. i did not
take her word for it. she was 
too crooked to tell what my feet
were walking on. broken mornings 
bleeding yolk on the kitchen floor.
the screen is a bowl of figs.
no cars by mine in the audience.
i check the backseat for strangers.
listen & hope for no videos of myself.
all around the forest animals 
watch too. they ask each other
if we get to share the same 
afterlife or if we all go into
our thousands & thousand of caves.
lighting a candle just to see
the dreamscape. the manna glistening
on plates of gold. all for me.
we all want to believe we will
be rewarded or at least compensated.
the angels make shadow puppets 
& laugh at the ways morals
roll their hope down every mountain
they can find. i get out of the car
& walk towards the screen
as a film of my brother & i 
by the ocean spills so vividly 
from the screen that i can feel splashes
of salt water. then, the film cuts.
just my empty bathroom. a centipede
meandering across the floor. 
my shadow cast on the screen.
i close my eyes & open my hands 
as if they might fill with caramel.
the dead deer stands up 
& scatters into the deeper woods
where there are entrances 
to the otherworld everywhere.
still, we all have the act of passage.
release. i am not dead but i do
have conversation with them.
turn on my car before the credits.
more & more vehicles filling the lot.
no where to turn around.
shadows inside, eager to see 
what the projector has to say.
abandoning the old car 
just to walk home along 
the winding forest roads. 
in bed that night, the projector finds me.
puts a movie on the ceiling
as i try to sleep. i tell myself,
"i am alive. i am alive."

on star burials

we take the heavenly body
& wrap it in pink tissue paper.
edges singe. the star
lays like a guava or a mango
in the palms of my hands.
still warm from centuries of use.
i remember how when i was small
my father held me up to change
light bulbs inside the porch lamps
because only my hands were small enough
to reach inside. light bulbs 
cool & dead bird in my arms.
my father & i with our hiking boots
& our backpacks full of gardening tools
for digging. what did your father
teach you how to burry?
mine was big on star watching.
he told me he had wanted to be 
an astronomer but instead
ended up a grave digger for stars.
watching them through the night
& waiting for one to flicker & 
go dark. hotel signs that blink
on the highway between here
& the next town over. we sleep
in parallel beds. the bible is 
a lunar landing. satelittes
in butterfly nets. he has to make jokes
about the star in order to make
our task less solemn. he says,
"Why couldn’t the star stay focused?
He kept spacing out." the star whispers
a story about a falling tower.
terrified, my father instructs me
to start breaking earth. the worst part
is when the star is remembering.
fires & darkened skies & the lovers
of so many stones ago. 
we burry them in the backyard 
& sometimes if i put my ear to soil
i can still hear their ghosts.
they say, "it is gone anyway"
& "he used to hold me. he used to."
fading is a sacrament.
patting the earth as we walk away.
he will not speak to me for days after.
i'll pick up the phone.
a call from him. just silence.
filling his pockets with white hote comets.
i always wonder if he finds a place
to sob like i do. beautiful beautiful star.
heavy & sleeping. sometimes,
i wish they would all wake up
& make embers of what i know.
i wonder where they go. a new sky.
this time indigo instead of black.
above the heads of other creatures
& their fathers & their hungers.

glory / glory / hole

salvation was an entrance.
here is where i am not nothing.
i am the appendage & you are
the other side of the lincoln tunnel.
holding my breath. i promise 
not to invent a new devotion
for where your body begins.
finally, a wall meaning freedom
or else a fallen cleaver.
we all want to be castrated
to know what if might feel like
to run around like statues.
i find you here after 
treasure maps spoke my life
into existence. i pictured your hand
pressed to the wall. taking me
& me taking you. i think of
the word "dispenser" & wonder
i have already become post-human.
then, crouching
where i used to in the woods.
a limestone kiln covered in vines.
i would enter & run my fingers
across the cool stone walls.
this is the hallways i meet you in.
your face populates every ceiling.
i look down at us. see the illusion
of the divider. ask for your last name
& address for me to send you
flowers on our anneversary.
to be anonymous is not to be
no one--it is to be everyone.
i am the pleasure you wanted
& you are mine. straining as if
a mouth could open wider. the teeth
like row houses. snake hearts wrapping
around the dark. then a release.
spitting out the sun on
the sidewalk. concrete confessionals.
wondering what it would take
to step through a hole so small.
considering peering through.
my only telescope. but it is
too late. you are gone. 

rattlesnake roundup

we believe in catch & release.
hunting only for the sake of
capture. a metal hook
to hold the snake at length.
everything in this world 
coils in an 's' shape.
this means ready
to strike. the children run 
in circles. crouch to share
a tray of shoestring fries
dreaming of snaring their own. 
rattles that buzz & thrum.
an instrument of questions.
"when will you fear me,
when will i fear myself?"
we are not the only species
to celebrate arrests but we are
maybe the most ceremonial.
men who save belt buckles 
for standing in mountains 
of rattlesnakes. hands on their hips.
we pluck one from the rest,
explain you need to hold the snake
right behind the head
where he cannot whip around
to bite you. the children
practice on each other. 
a boy covers his eyes 
& his mother tells him he is
missing everything. running,
participants imagine themselves 
in duels with the wild. as if 
they were not also born
in the forest. holding snakes
down to measure them. writing numbers
to dercribe an encounter 
with scales. all their ribs
like angel teeth. milking 
venom to fill cups after cup.
we tell the snakes they are
visitors & soon they will be
sent back into their privacy.
hollows & dark. sunning themselves
& thinking of our faces. round
as personal moons. they are not
afraid of us. they are maybe
furious. maybe grateful.
maybe both at once. wishing they could
fill us with cold blood.
cover us in scales. we take off
our boots boy the door.
check them in the morning 
for snakes. worry about retribute
& the rule of threes. whatever
you give to the world
comes back three fold. 
this time next year we know
we will have to wear this again. 

meteor carving

my teeth fell out of my face
then down from the sky.
every day is ending at once
like a simultaneous domino extinction.
i pull the blinds shut
& become a hunk of birds
hurtling through space. 
my friends sit & watch 
on the side of a hill. i am
one of them & i am fourteen
& she is a person full of so 
many holes. sometimes the wind
makes a flute of her. a song
is not always a decision.
i have my voice pulled from me
like spring onions from soil. once,
she found a meteor & took
a paring knife to its surface.
carved it into an eye 
just to watch it blink. 
a squirrel sits & eats 
planets while no one is watching.
they are mostly uninhabited.
well, that's no true.
populations are devoured every day.
i am looking. my brain 
is a panopticon for what
will end. i am not paranoid
i am primed for the tower.
lightning falling easily 
as fingernails. on the night
of the showers we prepared
to die. drank milkshakes 
as if our blood could hold
the sugar. a boy throwing rocks
at the road as if it were water.
as if he were the cosmos themselves
in need of regurgitation.
i saw then only through 
the meteor's eye. 
rapid light & a collage 
of dead girls. their bodies 
in rows on roof tops. 
all of them mine. missing earth
by a few seconds. letting out
our breath & hoping maybe for another.

dead & living hummingbirds

as if the cure were repetition,
i beat my wings with ghosts.
drink the flower dry & move on
to find another face. 
wore my chest as red as light
would let me. refractions of teal
sent like messengers from 
another galaxy's moon. how close
are you breaking? i find edges 
in every single seam. is this where
i will miss a beat? where i will plummet 
or where a photograph will leave me
without any oars. the boats 
are made with holes. the feeder 
is held like a lantern by
a man who owns an oil rig.
there is nothing left untethered
but us. no ground at all. 
the dead hummingbirds tell me
i am closer & closer. i ask
"to what?" to which they respond
with laughter. orbs of glass
drop from my beak. i am not
in the business of deciding
who is & isn't a hummingbird but
if you feel fine you might not
be a hummingbird. we have that need
to tread air. i woke up with
such a desire for sweetness.
all the emptiness. ghosts swallowing
their old sounds. how to turn
a name inside out. i stand 
in the garden we always asked for
trying to decide from who 
i will get my seance today.
everyone has their nectar.                        

i want to sleep with you inside a bell pepper

you always told me you wanted a ceiling
high enough for chandeliers.
you did not always tell me that.
i am lying but i can imagine 
how big your wants could get because mine
swell too. sometimes i want to live
in a mcmansion. how i might walk
from room to room to room in search
of a convenience. then, other days
i want to be the acorn's meat.
held like a fallen thumb & carried
towards never becoming as occupied
as a tree. i could not handle
that responsibility. my interest
is in the dirt & what you & me
might become there. truly, i would like
to be pith of an orange. seeds ringing
in a tangle of cirtus. lemon. lime.
tangelo. there are so many places to live
& so few keys to them. at flea markets
you can often find bins of antique keys.
the locks have long ago 
flown away to live in the bodies 
of tall tall men. in the fridge 
is a lovely orange bell pepper
with a sticker for a heart. 
i could cut the smallest hole.
just big enough for me & you 
to slip inside. we wouldn't have to
tell anyone at all. we could
have our own house warming.
laugh & hold the tiny poker-chip seeds
in our hands. breathe on them.
watch baby peppers grow. 
stave off rot with prayers. 
almost a chandelier--the white seeds
spilling from the living room ceiling.
you would sleep. i would sleep
& the shadows outside 
would mean nothing but ghosts. 

GPS directions to your house on the moon

you never told me you moved
but i assumed when i saw the moon
stippled red. i climb a staircase 
& you are not there. you were never
the sarcaphogus i thought. opening
every container you gave me 
in the hopes of finding a useful skull.
i open the window to make
moon water. by which i mean
i am doing magic with the thought
of seeing your space garden. pacing
my life like a hallway. painting
all the walls of the house black
until the space inside is only
as large as a grasp. did anyone notice
how alone i let myself be?
i am grieving the caves of myself.
pushing a shopping cart of cellphones
towards a blackhole. puncture wound.
digital clock. i take out my phone
whose battery i quickly becoming
a dead beetle. ask the machine
to take me to you. a blue umbilical cord
tethered to the moon. i follow myself
across a cheese clothe sky.
mesh & holes & holy. how to be
the muscle you need. unchanged.
you stood as a house inside a house.
holding my breath to survive
in space. your flowers all dried 
& petal blown in the galactic winds.
you are home & not home. you would not
remember me if i pleaded. that is not
how a heart works. cannot be made
to recall a face. the way dirt
spits toads back into the spring
after a long winter. my cell phone dies
& have no way home. i could jump 
of course & land in the wild ocean.
you talk to a mirror until it becomes
a whole separate mouth. i do the same.
how easy it is to find your own factions
if given a box to do so.
space ships break open. debris
makes a ballet across the stars.
there is no such thing as earth
for me to return to. inside your house
inside your house i knit my own.
sit quietly & hope you won't notice
i have written a future inside 
your present. do not mind me.
i am just spilling 
every parcel of myself.

city of chairs

sitting forward in row
& watching the sun become
a man again. a plate of fishes
passed & passed. no one eats 
fish anymore. the ocean lives
in a single glass. coming to visit 
the citizens of the city of chairs
peer inside. dip a finger
beneath what used to be a wave.
all part of a movement towards observation.
the walls peeling away like rinds.
first tall glass buildings 
& then a great shattering.
when i do my daily watching
i look at the backs of heads 
waiting for a tree to emerge--
grow from skulls. we are all in 
purgatory for believers. whatever we believe
is waiting to arrive. un-horsed chariots.
finding loopholes for chairs. 
counting a lover's vertabrae. 
stacking for a city scraper.
god says it will all be ready soon
& then we will go underground &
centuries later they will find 
miles of chairs & wonder how we lived.
i too am a historian wondering 
how we are living. smog that returns
like grandfathers to promise 
a new industry. we are producing
more chairs. when they are delivered 
we will have to decide what 
to do with them. a rumor says 
a chair can be used as a house. 
whole families who crouch beneath.
i should know. i lived under a rock
for as long as i could. the ocean shifts
loses a droplet. the whole city, seated,
weeps. new regulations. curfew.
narrows stretches of breath.
holding on to axels of light.
then, the urge to sneak out at dusk.
to grab the ocean & hold it up to my face--
looking through the depths
& imagine what it was once like
to watch the sun swell mammalian 
over ancient water. everything is so new.
i want an antique chair. 
or maybe one with a cupholder.
shifting desires. i learn to want less
& i am so good at it that i teach others.
someone says, "was it always
this purple at twilight?" i say,
"it was," even though i've never seen
the sky so ready to kneel. 

flower emoji

i'm saying yes i want so badly
to be put in the window. you wingow. 
fed packets of sugar as i 
cultivate all my pink & red.
drawing a picture of myself 
of myself. the twin mirror who 
follow each other into likenesses.
a picture of a flower comes
to smell like a flower. attracts 
bees who want to drink cellphone dry.
i put a flower into transmission
& you wake up in a nest of blossoms.
they digitally grow from your ceiling.
between my knuckles. typing 
"i love you" or "i love u"
or "i luv u." the garden networked.
designs of god. replica & replica.
every identical emotion 
that has escaped & come back to me.
hives arrive to swarm. the kind of honey
that can only arrive via notification.
we are thousands of miles apart
& i am trying to say "i'm sorry."
imagine a delivery man who i hire
to leave a single flower
on your doorstep for every sentecne
i write you. to come apart is a series
of flag polls farther & farther away.
they say glows like a phone flash light.
small point of light to follow.
only to discover the flower 
does not change. you could return
every single day just to find it
like this a face of a face. 
you open your pocketbook & there i am.
the doorbell rings. the door is just
a telephone call. you are just
split seconds away. but not at all.
telling you i am not sorry.
then eating the telling until
it bursts into garden. i plug
the flower in & wait. i know 
it is over for you & me.