easter sunday mass inside a whale carcass

some people pay for jesus.
my boyfriend took me to an easter service
inside a purse. all the ladies 
sang like their voices were dimes.
i stood & dreamed of oceans. a place
to sink deep enough that god might be possible.
a collection basket with legs. beetles 
crawling from beneath an altar.
on the ocean floor, pale opal-eyed fish
travel for miles in search of worship.
the whale, whose heart was once a city,
now a corredor of emptying. his eyes 
dead light bulb planets. all the divinity 
he found in his travels. speaking softly
to giant squids. pulling lines of scripture 
from the sweep of the sand. 
wild as i am, i have never let myself sink.
sometimes i tie weights to me feet
& stand on the lip of a drain 
thinking maybe today will be when
i get to plummet. i am fearful. not of deep
but of holy & that there might not 
be the grandness i was promised. 
in my boyfriend's church they fed us sugar.
repeated the word "saved" as if it were
a speach act. crustaceans bring their eyes.
clip flesh from the church's body.
bones clutching bones. the ceilings 
with their white salt-ridden flesh.
this kind of glory only happens 
with distance from the sun. 
show me your darkness & i will show you
decay. earth force-feeding herself.
the fishes hymns as they work. 
they do not know lent is ending.
god will not rise, he will sink & sink. 

vacuum dancing

i took to excavating the apartment
at the end of each day 
as if to announce to the walls, 
"we were never here." standing in 
the kitchen & swaying with
ceiling fan. i felt grateful
for my enclosures. the number of
entrances between me & the bears.
the mountain outside the window
had flocks of wild & waiting.
no, i'm lying. i wasn't afraid
of bears. in fact, i wanted more.
left my back door open
in the hopes they might stumble inside
& make a disaster of me.
how glamorous that might be 
to be made a ribbon of fear for once.
i moved back & forth with 
my vacuum. calling her "darling"
& "sweet." her endless mouth.
the way she could take insider her
all my catastrophe just to spit it out
into a plastic bag. i am alarmed 
by how easy it is to dispose of
a day's worth of skin. she told me
not to worry. told me there would
always be more. getting down
on my hands & knees in the hallway.
following a centipede to a hole 
in the wall where his world
would be feathered & waiting.
telling my vacuum i wanted her
to call this a dance if not
a sacrifice. he never agreed 
or disagreed. simply followed me.
picturing those dance step diagrams
all across the splintered wood floor.
we live in such capsules. 
my vacuum asked me for one more round--
from the hallway to the bathroom.
then, no more. putting her back
into her stone-sleep & me into
my bear-waiting. 

every lake is a spiral galaxy

i want to still believe in tenderness.
the world has had me living 
with mouthfuls of glass. i talk 
& speak through thousands of days worth
of nests. wires necking above the city.
lakes come like cousins. i never knew
most of my family. they live 
with real doors & real tastes of green.
i told you yesterday i am going to
buy us a house so deep in the forest 
no one will believe we exist. 
i am worried that to be gentle
is to be not here at all. thinking of
lamb's ears & how they are listening
to every single harm. they are doing nothing.
at least the stones decide to grind
& fall & break into more of themselves.
there is a cliff i dream i was born from.
the sensation of losing a larger self
to become several smaller selves.
i collect my softness in marble pouches.
spill them at the feet of any tree
who wants to listen. a collective shrug.
on television somewhere we are selling
stuffed animals. they are arriving
in card board boxes. i want to purchase 
every thing i need. i want to buy 
a patch of clothe always large enough
to lay me down in. i cannot trust 
every glint isn't a waiting fracture.
the way i used to smile before
lightning killed the tree in the front yard.
that is a lie. my father cut it down.
with his bare hands. it was such 
a huge woman & she knew everything 
about the universe. wisdom leaves
without a tongue to trace. when i find a lake
i will not be sharing this knowledge 
with anyone. the opposite of soft 
is maybe hoarded. keeping & keeping.
my secret basin. the stars dart like minnows.
they don't even know what they are.

ice cream sandwich communion 

in the digital pasture
we found a church of pen caps.
everything was web 2.0 
but i wanted to know 
where the ice cream was. where
we were going to be fed.
i stay up at night thinking
of how & why there will cease
to be ice cream. in the days
of late-early apocolypse, i hoarded
all the ice cream i could find
until the freezers were empty.
stand in front lawns
with a spoon in my mouth 
waiting for god to come. we maybe ask
too much of each other. i want
someone to give me their body
between two soft chocolate cookies.
no spoon neccessary. just teeth.
waiting for the day's loading bar
to complete & yet here i am.
not fully rendered but fully
waiting to be glorious. i never met
a confessional that wasn't bugged
& live streaming. here is everything
i want to be destroyed for. here is
everything i for which i want 
to be loved. we break bread 
by which i mean we break our phones
ceremoniously. they were mad of chocolate.
we do not have a single notification. 
not in heaven. earth is losing 
all its green so we enter VR. 
touched the grass
like the back of a great animal.
eat the new synthetic ice cream 
which tastes like hollow eggs.
it is not holy like the kind
we knew. the kind animals became
omen for. licking cream 
from my fingers. i want to remember
what it was like to unwrap
salvation. bless my own mouth.
i no longer believe in sin. 

living in a fireplace

saying, "this is not so bad,
this could be so much worse,"
when the man with grape fingers 
comes to deliver more wood.
hungry as our lives are. famished 
& in need of good dry timber.
my brother & i take turns breathing.
find a corner of the structure 
where air arrives as mice.
what i wouldn't give to be 
a campfire or at least a smoke house.
i remind myself i live inside 
a promised heat. tomorrow the wood floor
will blush because of us.
the forest outside is a machine
for the blaze. taking handfuls of ash
& blowing in each other's faces.
laughter crackles & pops.
i tell my brother he is brave
as his head catches fire again,
deforesting his skull. we are 
glossy & molten. i do not actually think
me or him are brave. i think we 
needed a place to live & i think
without the fireplace we would just
be rotten apples underneath 
the distractable moon. instead 
we have light. cut shadows in 
any backdrop. invent birds with
our skeleton fingers & send them
to eat everything red & alive.
at night when the fire wants
to be embers, the man comes
breathing on them until they catch again.
rest is a planet of fuel. the sun 
tucking strands of hair behind her ears.
my father is not the man but 
they look almost identical. 
i ask my brother if he thinks 
we'll ever leave & he shrugs to say,
"we are alive, aren't we?"
i am not sure we are but i love him
& so i lie to him. i say,
"yes, yes we are."

my brother & i do not catch the bird

& the bird is very expensive.
is not covered by insurance.
but we want the bird. we need the bird.
saw the bird in the yard
while we watched from our bedrooms.
never intending to be children
my brother & i decided the bird
could make us whole. 
his brown-speckled feathers 
& thumb-sized beak. watching worms
write their poetry on the sidewalk
after a spring rain. i would try
to sleep but all i could see was
the bird. bigger & bigger.
the size of my head & then 
is tall as me. then, i was the bird
i wanted to catch. hang feathers
in the closet like dresses.
to have the bird would mean
nothing else could get away.
we ran so fruitlessly. tripping &
scrambling in the grass. bird with
his wings & trees. i am jealous 
of the bird. to be wanted.
to be chased. i have been captured
too many times to count. in fingers 
& blankets & closets 
& once by a broom.
my memory tells me i have experienced
more pain than i'm supposed to talk about. 
i laugh because i also know 
my brain is a knot of lies. 
picture this: a family of birds 
& you are the human. 
need to microwave meals. need to 
use a telephone. i thought i had
my hand finally wrapped around the bird.
it was just my brother's wrist.
i wished for a second i could
just turn him into a bird. 
afterall, don't we all have a duty
to pretend to be exactly what
our loved ones need? i let go 
& he rubs his wrist. he is not a bird.
the bird is in the branches
so near. a feather falls at my feet. 

rabbit stencil

i give you all my nervous
parameter. in the chewing,
we were blades. tracing paper 
sprawling across the day. 
my outlines like stairwells.
you wanted a rubric for a future us.
the rabbits perch cupping 
single little jewels in their hands.
some of them hold secrets
passed down from father to father
to father. the rabbits are careful
to not think of the secrets too often.
they are afraid someone can 
hear them thinking. the rabbit arrives
to my doorway on the day i am 
barely visible. my outline
turned to snakes. the rabbit confesses 
the sun was born out of envy.
two stars making bets over comets.
this is why we have to feed
like we do. the rabbit weeps
that he has given away all he has.
i tell him we can invent a new secret.
crouch down. i whisper something
i cannot tell you or else 
it wouldn't be secret. rejoicing.
the rabbit suggests i try 
becoming a picture book. 
i tell him i will consider it.
nostalgia for the earliest destructions.
how they once promised catelogging.
my outline in a book of outlines.
now it's just you & a gallery 
of rabbits. you say i should 
be more positive. taking charcoal 
to make me a pond vibration.
the rabbits press their secrets
beneath their tongues.
i am undone. pond vibrations.
the ripples that soundwave
from every edge. you say
the rabbits are staring at us
from the front yard. i tell you
to close the curtains & help
me figure out again 
where my face begins. 

forest escalator

we took the machine into canopy.
asking each other "which up
are we going to be?" a sky is
an egg-ceiling. all the bird 
dying & falling past like hail storm
or broken beads. do you remember
when the earth was flat? 
how we could walk for days & find
the ledge to stare off of.
final trees of the forest
gripping tight onto the conclusion.
now, every sentence ends with 
a tiny earth. or is it a cherry seed?
making the wild more modern.
inviting visitors to see
the horizon's contact lens.
i never wanted to leave the ground.
in fact, i would not have given up
on the all-fours life. 
lizards & me. the forest is always
growing taller. pushing the beach ball sun
back & forth in the air. 
so many people next to me 
walk downward as the escalator
moves up. perpetual legs. 
i listen to the direction.
go higher & higher. past the ghosts
of elephants who hover just above
the trees & past the threat
of thunder. below the forest becomes
a patch of strawberry tops.
goodbye birds. i grow feathers
to fill that space. my eyes 
plant what i need. dirt waterfall.
"where are we going?" i ask another.
he becomes a cluster of snakes.
i consider jumping but instead
request the mechanism send me back
as a droplet of water. 
a voice says, "sure, whatever."
i plummet & seep into the soil below.
the others, i am unsure what became of them.

heaven on earth

i hit an angel with my car.
no blood at all, just a mess 
of milk & feathers.
did not package the body,
simply hoisted them in a heap 
on the side of the highway.
inspected their thousands of eyes
& wished they could say something more.
lately, i am visited by gold
that is not mine. gate after gate.
my neighbor who listens for 
bells before running outside to pray.
heaven is a place of obedience
or so i am told which makes it
one in the same with earth.
i saw another angel sipping coffee
at the starbuck on hamilton street.
no one else seemed to see her.
what i want to know is what it means
to be toggling with an other world.
am i dying or just stripping away
whatever seam there used to be.
guilt from killing the angel with my car
has been devouring me from the inside.
unlike humans though, no one comes
to remember a dead angel.
i ate more than the museum in sadness.
a spiral staircase bloomed deep 
into the marble depths of a grandmother.
how could we get this far without 
telephones? calling through the night
until the ring was just another opening.
wanting the dead angel to answer
from the other side of the other side.
i find a cabinet of curiosities
sitting at the bottom of a well.
a skull there signed by everyone
who wore it. face of all faces.
i am apologizing to the angel.
driving my car back to the spot
in the middle of the night
just to find them gone. only
a single feather where the body 
had been. telling myself they are
not dead at all. uncertain what
the criteria for assumption is.
i call a friend & then a lover.
neither pick up. i pull over 
& in the gravel scattered 
thin edge of the forest
i make my own little heaven
from rocks and twigs & fingers.
i say, "this is where my angels live."
stepping back, weeping. 
all i want to do is ask what they 
had been doing crossing the road
in the dark. whose soil is this anyway?
it is not mine, i am sure.
the clouds watch me with amusement.
another feather blows past in the breeze. 

humid boxing ring boy body

fishing for a breath in a downpour.
my bones were so plausible.
all the feet i had on the rubber mats
of the gym. how, i could work my body
into boy somehow. in fits of arms
& collision. biting down on 
a rubbery mouthguard. drool unspooling
from the corner of my mouth. 
i found my lips in a snarl gallery.
all the boy with their born-ready shoulders.
little men standing inside boy bodies.
men standing on our shoulders.
masculinity is a school of square lives.
finding the right angles. the ropes 
building a parameter to live inside of.
he punched me in the chest & then 
the stomach. doubled over i saw myself
from above. already shucked.
saw all the threads & the miniature gender
made of glass because after all
all genders are made of glass. 
looking through that supposed-to
& already should. sweat arrives like soldiers.
they say, "you don't believe us
but you have a body." i refuse.
drink water hungrily from a folding chair
while my father tells me i am 
not a man but i did good. good for 
whatever is beside boy. spitting 
the mouth guard into my hand & seeing
how the cis boys shoved each other
like love poems. in the bathroom 
i washed my masculinity 
& patted it dry with 
the brown papertowels. told my body
to try again another day. fighting 
had everything & nothing to do 
with trying to have a skeleton.
at night, the soreness arrived
like a flock of birds. all of them calling,
"you are you are you are."
i counter, thinking, if my gender is true
then why do i have to spar
to make it legible.