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."

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.