leather photograph

the cow was our dream of permanence.
she would wondered towards us from 
all furrows of the town. ready to step into
a framed memory of our faces.
i am forgetting every plastic lawn chair
& replacing them with window shopping.
cows in the windows & cows wearing 
prom dresses & cows sporting straw hats.
skin for skin. as a child
i ate so much meat. each time it rained
cows laid down inside me. i slept
underneath a square of orange cheese. 
grazing on shredded paper. this morsel
was a whole fist of taxes.
in my wallet i keep a condom in case
i might need it. i know this defeats the purpose.
friction can cause the apparatus to tear.
but don't we all want an inch or two
of unearned comfort. the cow does. 
she scrapes a name from a tongue 
& decides it means she won't become 
a durable pair of shoes. what do you think
of scrap booking everything
& burning the house to ash? 
more eco friendly if you ask me. 
it is totally possible to survive 
on plots of yesterday. your face 
so round & bright it could be
just a rubber ball. the cow is waiting 
on the sidewalk for someone to lead her
to her machine. archways for undoing
her muscle from bone. she says,
"i would like to be a photograph."
you lie to her & tell her that is 
exactly what she will be. preparing her skin
you try to find a sunset. flesh is flesh
is flesh. no light at all. just 
horizon seams & blood.

atomic ray gun briefcase 

i want to be a professional craver.
excavating the yard for time capsules 
i find nothing of the sort. decide 
if i am going to find the past
i will need to sell something antique.
in the meantime, we all have to defend our homes 
against the threat of delight.
i read in a magazine too much bliss can
infect a person & make them radio active.
who knows what kind of career
waits for us on the other side
of the glass. i buy a suite & hand it
on the back of the bathroom door 
so long that it grows moss & then
a personality of its own. each morning
it says, "back to the old grind"
before chuckling to itself.
there is nothing beautiful about 
pulverizing my fragments of joy 
into sugar to be eaten. i carry 
a spoon in my pocket next to my ray gun.
it doesn't shoot don't worry. it's just
a replica of what we should fear.
sometimes i worry that i am also
in a replica. that a creature hunched over
& set each corner of my world
in the hopes of showing a lover
what it could all be like. 
secretly, the brief case is empty
leaving enough room in case i pass
a deer skeleton. then i can stock up
for the next time i need to change species.
when i had no job i was thinking
"i will do anything to have a paycheck"
& now i wonder if i could carve myself
into the heart of a tree & sleep there
until the world is nothing but smoke.
click of each buckle. how long have you
let yourself shut? i walk out into the yard.
i lied just a little bit. i never tested
the ray gun so it could be a replica
or it could be the real deal. 
i'm wearing my best loafers 
in the damp muddy yard. aiming the gun
up at the clouds. a sherbert sunset
i pull the slick metal trigger.
 

heaven in the basement

we found serafin stalking the ceiling
like moths. tried to captures them
with dental floss & prayer books,
swatting at them all through the night.
their hum like whirling machines.
you can want an afterlife so bad
it starts to arrive. picture frames
emptied of all their faces.
i didn't want to go down there
where the portal was becoming
a television. static in the ait.
finger-tip length world.
i don't believe in god. this is a vacant
fissure. to step through a
window made of fingers. i want 
the other side to have tapestries
of impossible forests & a lake
as deep as i need it to be.
telling the not-god, here i am 
in all my sleep. the house condensed.
palmful of salt. i throw everything i can
over my shoulder for luck.
bicycles & forks & flowers. 
the basement is not something
that can go away. it's always there.
louder on some days compared to others.
i take a knife some nights 
& crawl on hands & knees as if
a violence could extract a heaven.
don't we all want to be told
we will arrive somewhere grand 
& bold & sugared. i am careful
of all doors & all thresholds.
a doorknob white hot. 
i have watched centipedes 
scramble down there 
& never return. i have even less legs
than them. the serafin laugh
like crinkled silver. 
i tell them i can't hear them
& they say, they can't see me.
not yet.

weddings for houseflies

do you promise each other
until tomorrow do we part
above the sleeping bananas?
a house is a dream of sugar.
does one of you think
oh you & your stain glassed wings?
teeth on the windowsill.
looking in the light for dresses.
so often i am exactly this brief.
hovering just above 
a mouthful of the world. 
instead i land where it is safe
& damp & quiet. hold my eyes 
in my hands like bowl of blackberries.
standing on the ceiling with you
where we can pretend every light
is a skateboard to the sun.
your wedding had no guests
only other dancers. how you gather 
like fingers in flocks.
i try to imagine how long 
a few days might feel 
if that would the only life 
you had. do you celebrate
the minutes? do you tell a lover
i remember when, three minutes ago
i fist witnessed your craving
for trash can syrup? i can make myself
feel guilty of just about anything.
i don't want to crush you
into your own little crumpled morgue
but i have to. thumb & forefinger.
i destroy the whole wedding party 
who once gathered like mandolin strings
near the orange fruit bowl.
gone. their memories still hovering,
moving in tiny six-legged orbits.

dark room for pictures i didn't take

when i told you i would remember
the door opened like a cascade of nowhere.
into the fade of your face.
a humid tongue to stand on.
this is my ted talk on why we shouldn't
ever be in love. picking sick from
from the thumb trees of our town.
an abandoned factory spitting bolts 
into our open hands. i would have
accepted anything. the photographs then 
hanging like moons on their strings.
soldiers in their own right.
how sometimes an image can be 
sharp enough to extract your whole life.
the times my body was a projector sheet.
dipping me in the developer. your teeth
in a line across my chest. 
will i always be swallowed? did i allow
the mouth or did the mouth allow me?
drinking with our pinkies up.
the rusted & dead driveway batteries
we have to use to turn on brocade.
pictures of feather you took 
& took as they fell from a slit.
i asked for your help but you said
you were hungry. everyone is an artist
until the hollow becomes a partner.
i carried his bag of echoes
to the creek. a bullfrog ate a bird.
a snake formed an infinity symbol
as a joke. i emptied everything
he told me about my skin. 
but the world splashed back at me.
i lost my eyebrows to this.
the photos bathes bringing them
into a future of black & white.
this is not a picture of us. this is
only a picture of me.

@ the gym i lift halos

& get my skull crushed in the process.
heavy as a teaspoon of supernova dirt.
there are cycles that were never meant for me.
the way the sun leaves halos
in your eyes if you stare too long.
going outside to cut a body 
from terryclothe. jumping rope 
while the kick boxers pretend the punching bag
is their fathers or god (what's the difference).
they say exercize is a form
of stress release. i find my heart 
is a nest of finches. i collect strings
to help them build. as if my body could ever
be made into something less transparent.
i was cocky. i thought, "maybe angel."
i found a long mirror to ask my muscles
about their topiary. a breeze threats 
to pull leaves from the sockets.
the angels go into a bee hive to train.
for me i have a sweaty bench.
watch other men's hands gripped 
around the necks of barbells.
what are they lifting? i guess 
the better questions is what do they think
they are lifting? once on a bad day
i lifted my whole family all the way back
to grandfathers. no one noticed
so i gave up. more people should give up
more often. i reccomend once a week.
i stand in the middle of the halo
as if glows like no tomorrow.
there is no tomorrow at least not for
my strength. i flex as if 
a muscle could become a home.
i do not know how to be divine
but i do know there are 
figure skaters who help inspire
the shape. they are all evaporated.
tracing the circle with a finger
just to hear it sing. my skull
in stained glass pieces.
who needs a good body after all?
the halo can belong
to someone else.

dogwood blooms w/ dogs

i was the down boy & stay stay stay
in the sickly sweet april 
of your first hikes.
the mountain didn't know 
what to do with all the faces. 
tossing them from its branches 
like tissues or travelers.
picking dogs for you
from the green. giving away
you phone number to breeders.
everything is fucking
or at least yellow. crocuses 
with their throats full
of the young boy i could have been.
a boy & his dog a dog & his boy.
us, running on the railroad tracks
until they turn into ladders.
dreams of coal that once
pulled fire from the earth.
i am rescuing the dogs or else
they are not dogs at all but
flowers who learned to run.
rearing its ugly head,
a knot forms in the tree's factory.
how i stuffed my pockets.
smelled my fingers for pink.
found a few unopened buds
which remembered me of fawn.
worried if i held them too long
they'd burst free with all 
those hooves. but instead
we have dogs enough to survive.
dogs for sleeping & dogs
for confessions. i laugh 
like only a meadow really should.
let the tree deliver 
dog after dog. forgetting all memory
of blossoms. how an old lover once say
he could see a whole dogwood tree
at the back of my throat.
tails wagging & all. it is better left
between me & the animals 
of which i am certaintly one.
i hope to grow alive like this
in the next life. swelling sensation
& then the wet april-mouthed world
stirring me until i have legs.

goldfish tricks

long ago i taught my goldfish 
how to come when they're called.
the world is a water wake.
caskets of diamonds & 
an ocean as deep as a planet.
if given enough room
goldfish swell huge as koi.
i am thinking of how
every want i had once fit inside
bowls of water. look how huge they are now.
i ask for impossible justices
in the form of wings & fins.
goldfish pass over head 
like the sun's messengers.
light making each scale glow. 
organs like nestled kingdoms. 
i cut gills in my own throat
with a pocket knife. i am learning to
live on fish food & following 
a herd of goldfish. i ask them 
what they know about gold but
all they can say is, "we are
on our way." i am not on my way anywhere
& i am worried neither is anyone else.
however, i might be moving away.
drifting. a ghost ship populates
with skeletons. i swim deeper.
see where the water is swelling
in both directions. soon the sun
will be a bowl. tapping the glass
& saying, "come." the fish moving
like stained glass, coming to take
a bite from my fingers. i used to be
master & now i am hungry.
nothing the right command couldn't fix.
looking for a mirror to 
talk to myself. finding only 
more of my kind. goldfish & more goldfish.
a maze of bowls. the glass making
our eyes in to catacombs.
each day i wake up & ask 
for far too much. i should learn
i should learn something new 
& bright & wonderful. the water tells me
there are enough handfuls of gravel 
in the world to eat algae off of.
do i believe in feathers? in birds?
in gold at all?
 

petco snakes

take me to your capture
where you were born like ribbon.
i no longer wish to be
whatever kind of free
i am told this is. i want 
a terrarium like yours where 
the world arrives for me to swallow.
a frozen mouse unthawing
in the heat lap. tell me,
when you see my eyes 
do they look like marbles
or distant planets? you move
like a noose around the dead log.
hide your face in a plastic cave.
maybe i am romanticizing 
your containment. forgive me.
my mind is just spilling 
from every single sky.
i tie myself to radiators
to keep from becoming a roadkill.
then here you are
with your right angles
& a lid where you were once
lowered in. i am looking
for a handler who will be gentle 
& not afraid of me. we are not
all the different. i will admit
i so badly want to take you home
& let you loose in our house
just to discover where you would
hide yourself. would it be
the same place that i go? the corner
of the room where i can hear
cars spinning down the street
late into the darkness. 
but no i will leave you here
my brief scaled friend. 
someday, tell me what you dream of.
we can always trade. i can be 
the cord or life behind glass
& you can be the human 
without any levees. whose face
makes a moon in your glass.

clock tower in a jar

i like my time in the form of jelly beans.
i don't eat anything 
one at a time. 
let's take turns feeding the snakes.
they come to my bathtub where
i've been soaking a handful of tombstones.
walking down an alleyway at night
i used to fill my pockets
with the dusk's sharp orange.
cuts all over my hands.  
how do you learn to live
outside the memory of your main street?
i was only a girl & my body 
lost limbs here & there. all my teeth 
blew out of my head like dandelion tufts.
i tried to collect them
& stick each back in. of course
it was a mess. i sometimes open jam jars
just to find they are all
berries still & not boiled 
& spreadable at all. i like my time 
in ladels. poured down my throat.
i like my time taken back
when it suites me. the bar of soap
growing larger again. then, in the fridge,
the jar where the clock tower lives.
his chicken face & his mischeif.
i open him up just to remember 
what it felt like to live so full
of winter. how my bones were each 
balanced beams. the clock tower bites
so i close the lid before
he can get out. my town crawls
on all fours when the moon is not out.
takes the opportunity to bite 
each breath from my mouth.
an open window. a fear of heights.
the trees feasting on sunset.
shoeless in the portrait
of a window. i am not sure anymore 
what vessel to put this in.
i carve a raft just to burn it.
eat a pink jelly bean.
let the morning do its work.