hostile architecture 

we built a city on bed of needles
& called it home to anyone.
where "anyone" means anyone.
the weeds named themselves after planets 
before turning hay-pale & gone.
comforts in the form of trash cans
& stacks of tires that say "free."
i don't want to be that kind of free.
here, a sip of water is a staircase of glass.
where does a boquet of hands belong?
knocking on your door to ask
if we can take a walk 
becuase it is just so nice outside.
we reach for holly leaves at the park. 
chew the green from our tongues.
fires beneath eyelids & 
a shopping cart full of rain.
all i want is a basket to carry you in.
the city hoards sleep in garbage bags.
sirens spill like bruised peaches
& rot underneath the bridge.
each emergency has less & less
to do with my feet. instead, 
i follow the ice cream truck down
to the other side of park 
where boys take turns 
scooping out pieces of moon 
to chew on. buy myself a street light.
standing beneath & saying,
"this is my shadow & this one & this one."
you can have control over where you keep
& what you call "treasure."
the house is for sale to anyone.
a stray cat is hit by a car
& her ghost walks upside down 
on the eaves of every school building.
at night, even the benches have teeth. 

color swatches for haunted bedrooms 

i slept red until the house
burned down & i had no more 
childhood bones inside me.
took a paint brush to my corner 
of sky & left it pink.
i'm holding a flower up to the wall
& saying, "if only we could bloom
like this." a ceiling fan spitting dust.
in the aftermath of my tongue,
i spat violet day in & day out.
locked the door & was told 
that love is an unlocked room.
knocking. knuckles. the boy
who hid beneath the bed 
& sang his own lullabies.
i let my brother stand in the corner.
i said, "don't look." red grew
like weeds across every inch.
loud & rusted & ready. 
i blind-folded myself to choose 
my body from a line-up.
blue or orange or cream. 
i could see every single smudge.
jungles waited in my hands.
how i taught myself to sleep 
in the chorus of demons. their
maroon fingers writing birthdays
in the dark. i called for my parents
& everyone came. the room was not
red to them. not even a little bit.
cupped my like a lemon seed.
sat me on a windowsill & said,
"don't jump, just look."
the sky hugged herself blue.
i mimicked her, doing the same.
it was enough to survive. 

cork forest

where do you go to find a stop?
i used to walk down a spiral stair
into the bottled world.
everything was blue glass 
& bound. a wine cellar is born
out of the gossip of skulls.
i discover one in the basement
of my apartment. walls & walls
where coiled inside purple 
laughs to death. i have searched
for more ways to live internally.
bought curtains for my eyes
& a key i long swallowed.
watch as the men make thumbs
of trees. breaking free their dresses.
i too was once a raw material. 
took my shoes off to pick
wild from a snaking vine. 
the lesion is more than just 
a street or a number of months.
it streches wide as i know you.
there is enough befores 
to fill me. disrobing for
the axe. a pile of ankles.
what could it mean to live 
as the barrier? to make the barrier?
the trees tell stories 
of what happens after the fourth year.
how instead a fruit can turn
into a bird's egg & then back
into a fruit. for me,
i am looking for more items
i could choke on. bolder & billard.
screaming into a plastic bag 
& letting it go 
as if it were a lantern. 
 

talent show for malfunctioning species 

we all watch the fireflies
swell into lightbulbs. a round
of applause for everyone who 
can't sleep tonight. my brother & i
take our opera glasses & watch
as the birds outside try make 
a phone call on a stolen cell phone.
at some point in our lives
we are all thieves. better now
than later. i have been using 
my tongue wrong this whole time. 
learning to cartwheel,
i watched trash cans in the wind.
there is something otherwordly 
in everything but especially our trash.
the theater is empty-seated 
& no one has eye lashes enough
to survive the next few silences.
all i want is to be magnificent.
is that too much to ask?
a knot of snakes are trying 
to write their names.
in the attic i'm still making
a pair of wings i can use
to escape whatever catastrophe
asks for my teeth. no one is clapping.
the spotlight makes a circus
of shadows. we all faint 
like paper dolls. of course i want
people to see me. i want people
to keep me in their pocket & say
"would you look what i got!" 
there's no such thing as 
a ticket booth. at least not for miles.
i take my shoes off to have jumping spider.
at the end of the sunset's stomach
there is another stage of only
trap doors. i stand over one
& wait impatiently. all i want to do
is plummet out of sight.
in the lush underground maybe 
there are legs enough for all of us.
someone takes a flash photo
so i cover my eyes. the flash 
perminantly paints my shadow
on a brick wall. i would like
to be brief. lemmings don't actually
jump to their death, you know?
they just... well yes i guess they
actually do that but it's not so bad
if you pretend they're just 
the strings of a great string instrument.
each plucked open for an apple's worth
of sound. i take a bow & 
wish i was some kind of heron
or at least an animal 
with less digital components. 
 

oyster mushrooms 

i wore a dress of oyster mushrooms
when i stood on your tongue 
like a bride. you said,
"they taste just like meat."
i roll my eyes. that is something
only a carnivore would say.
all the mushrooms danced & tried
to speak for the first time. 
the mushrooms for centuries 
have had a language that lives
only underneath their tongues.
aloud it sounded like water lapping
against a river rock. like beads
falling from a roof & onto the street.
i wished i know less of my own langauge.
how it had come from your mouth
like dog food & saw dust. i had
lived inside what words like 
"want" & "forever." 
i wasn't dressed for the occasion
as none of us are when we are 
told to be beautiful. your mouth
was damp & ravenous. i had promised
i would go as deep as i could. 
everything smelled like
crush dinosaur bones. 
a mouth can be anywhere you go
to confess. the mushrooms voices
echoing. i was my dress then 
the dress was me. i told you i loved you
in the language of mycorrhiza
but it was not nearly enough. 
i wanted to show you all the ways 
my body can speak.
talking with me in your mouth.
are we always to nest
inside our lovers imaginations?
here is where the mushrooms
give me wings.
you wanted a bowl of my hair
& to scour my body for spores.
i held a bouquet of mushrooms.
the mushrooms said in their voice
heavy with pebbles
"she wants to be a root."
he laughed & said,
"don't we all."

connect the dots

in the night everyone wore
their horse faces. i was trying
to figure out where my phone went
or who stole it. a box theif
trotted buy. a fox planted
dots all over the town.
when was the last time 
you followed numerical order?
i am no longer the first born.
now i am just an orion.
taking a quill pen & drawing 
bridges between every breath.
how did i use to know myself
so clearly. i would draw
my own outline each day starting
at shoulder & ending at ankle.
these days a point is here
& gone in a flash. i find
a speckle labled 23 but cannot find
all the others. the image 
could be anything. helicopters fly
with the sole purpose 
of finding out. i am not concerned.
we are either still alive tomorrow
or we are not. i make my own
on my bedroom wall. you are still
working. i should be sleeping.
instead though, i make a horse
from dots. i'm going to make
someone try to thread them.
there are days where everyone i meet
looks like this. a collage of 
unthreaded nexuses. i scoop a handful 
from them. pocket those points
to one day make a new self
i can where when the night
is this orange. i store them
beneath the moon where 
not even the crowns know to look. 

cut on the dotted line

i take the mighty scissors 
all the way across town
to where the instructions are perched
& preening. lately 
everything has been asking
to be severed. my friends grow
dotted lines criss-crossing
all over their skin. 
the lines used to make sense.
one for solace. another
for crafting a mask from wood.
now, everything has a splitting wish.
the instructions drop black feathers
all over town. i follow them
to the edge of the forest
where no lines will reach
dotted or otherwise. i always wanted
to become un-outlined. 
my colors smudging. 
leaving mess wherever i'd go.
instead i was given boundaries.
spiders webs have been skipping.
eyeliner lines too. give me
a sign we are not just
in between leaps. the chasms 
that ask to take the world whole.
the instructions laugh. do not know
what they are asking. i snip out
patches of dirt. a laundry mat
cracks open like an altar.
no one told me i was in the other half
but then all the clocks 
filled smiling melon. i'll take
the six hours i can get. 
my scissors chirp 
pretending to be a song bird.
bite down on soil & asphalt.
i look at my hands. dotted lines
in spirals on my palms.
try to wash them in the parting water
of the blue stream that 
someone else has already cut
a few miles up. "i just wanted to know
how i was supposed to survive,"
i tell the instructions who calls 
before vanishing again
between my breaths. 

crop tops & other secrets

i learned to eat 
on a stage of getting through.
cutting all the curtains in half.
slats of sunlight.
i try to take a nap but my heart
becomes a street lamp 
full of moths. all kinds of mothers
everyone has their shame 
stored in jars.
carrying them down to the river
to float them like shoes.
what i wouldn't give 
to be anyone else. spring 
is asking the important questions.
"when will i be 
green enough for you?"
carrying a spoon in my pocket
just in case. a landlord
thinking to himself, "i work so hard
for these mice." me, that's me.
i am mice. all the houses 
with for sale signs i join them
& put a for sale sign 
in my belly button. come & see
what the previous owner
has left for you. court yards
without any ivy. summer spitting
cherry seeds at the window.
no. that was a gun shot. no i think
it was just a firework. 
pot lucks without any luck.
i would try so hard to be
a woman. cut hourglasses 
into the walls & walked through them
just to find myself 
on the other side. i tried 
just as hard to be a men. 
punched holes in the drywall.
my knuckles are 
soldier helmets. i try to tell you
none of us are going to war
even though i know this isn't true.
i cut anything i can find
in half. scissoring panting
on the end table. 
you touch your hand 
to the small of my back.
all my hairs raise 
to attention.

tattooed moons

i went to learn perminance.
space stations dipped needles
in their dark. a teleprompter 
full of centos. the moons'
wild bright skin without 
any evidence of a language
i could learn.
old inhabitatns who only spoke
in memories of water. their obits 
ice-skating my collar bone.
the juggler on the corner
of the space station
where he drop his bells.
for my first tattoo i dreamed
the action could make me into 
an astronaut. blood to the surface.
breathing only galaxy dust. angels 
with feathers made of glass.
when i say "heavenly body"
the moons say, "we want to be
less holy." who doesn't want
to be less holy? i write my name
where no one will see it.
an ocean used to break here
or else this was a face
rolling in the skull gardens
of our grandfathers. no one was
proud of me but me. taking 
the fear of transition 
& snuffing it out. when i say "fear"
i mean delight. my joy is the kind
that burns stone. the moons gather
to exchange secrets. 
point to their mouths & say, 
"here is where
i want a name."

permission foods for gone boys

i'd like to i'd like to
from the table of candied
rain. putting on makeup
in the rear view mirror. this isn't
my car. i am not present 
but moreso pretending to be
a mouth. the spoons all have
ablackhole where the swallow should be.
i ask god if i'm allowed
to enjoy a buttery thumb
& he says i have not worked hard 
enough to earn that kind
of release. all the boys 
climb into the oven & come out
as fists. golden brown. have 
a fork twisting a wad of hair.
master sets out a bowl of water.
sitting in the hole of a donut
waiting for the sound 
of a whistle. i try to be
indulgent & by that i mean
i try to eat cherry tomatoes 
in halves. hot springs or hale storms.
never the less, i can't be trusted
with hunger & a doorway. i lock
my face in a lead box. 
become bullet proof for the sake
of cherry pits. open wide 
while you free my tongue.
pairing knife. a colony of 
electric taste. i press my palms
to my eyes. open wide as 
the dark. hear the sound of sweetness.
the baker's secret heart.
monkey bread. every one 
is taking pieces. i sacrifice 
a blue morning. but it is still
not quite enough.