sleet keeping

i ask the sky 
for the perminance
it cannot give. step out
into cobalt with 
an open bucket. collect for me
every fingernail & follicle.
if i am contained i am
not diminishing. i am still
in a world where i could
love you like i used to 
& we can still be a necklace
of ice. i want to be worn.
to be kept in a velvet box.
for you to call me "lover"
& bring me any trinket 
you can find. is it too much to ask
to be the cloud's muse.
rain coming now like beetles.
i heard you humming
as you dismantled your hands
one finger at a time.
what parts of you 
will i get to keep? i would like
to give you a snow ball
from a year ago. inside 
is a pearl born
in dust & stir. i empty 
every accumulation. 
no one tells the truth 
when they just want 
to feel holy. there are
buckets of beads that resemble
our eyes. i'm threading them 
on the telephone polls.
still the color of slate
heaven is full 
of unemptinesses. 

sled dogs in march

i wanted to be rushed through spring.
put my skull on a sled 
through the last vibrant snows.
i am joined in a field 
of dogs. each of them know
only one command, "stay."
so i say it over & over & over.
stay stay stay stay stay.
this is how i make a promise 
to continue to pick blades of grass.
the river births new batches
of gnats to toil in their circuses.
a neighbor lays out 
fake grass over a patch of dirt
as he smokes a cigar. we all 
are making sense of our shoulders.
i could tell you they pulled me
till the end of the year
but it would be a lie. we stopped
& laid looking up 
at a watermelon moon. i admitted
to knowing nothing about rest.
the dogs licked my face.
gave over a spare tooth to me
incase i wanted to make
a new face. i told them 
in the next few years i would love
to be a dog. i want to become
an instruction. stay stay stay.
waiting on the edge of a gust of wind
for a hand to unfurl.
instead for now 
my body runs like spilled leaves.
i am gathering 
& gathering as much of myself
as i can to walk 
on all fours into the sun's
bowl of oranges. here is 
the flowers' arrival. snow blinks
into rain. the dogs keep going.
the sled is a television by the end
of the season. the dogs 
are tossed knots of hurry--wanting.
i call "stay" 
& nothing stays. 

pot hole

i took all my boiling inward.
ushering the metal stomach
towards a red electronic point.
used my apples as grenades until
all the roads i made 
where laid with linens & veils.
to become the thrift store girl 
with a shopping cart full
of canteens. i am surviving
destinations like pearls shucked
from the faces of bob cats.
this highway used to be 
a forest of hungry ankles.
i am always stopping in a target.
taking all my wooden spoons out
to show i have no weapons
but my own nail beds. filling in
a hole requires something more
than what you started with.
i collected origins until
they all failed me. stuffed the fissure
with mud & mythology. i would drive
through arches to make you 
my bouquet of steering wheels.
a wind blows me from my oldest perch.
i see shadow children in the corner
of my vision. they nibble on toast
like rats. i tell them they can stay
just not get any closer.
stop signs bloom where we once
tried to plant basil. a hotel 
has eleven heart beats. 
under a neon sign i throw salt
over my shoulder. sleep in 
the hole in the ground
watching wheels pass over. 

living room video bowl

the fish were pre-fabricated 
just like my breakfast.
getting on a plane metaphorically speaking.
we used to be so distracted 
& now look at us trying to compost.
i don't want anything to do with
saving the planet. instead, i would prefer
to leave that work up to geese.
i have my advertising jingles 
to put the babies to sleep.
crimson flowers bloom 
non-holographically. we take turns
dipping our faces in a bowl 
of moon water. it tastes like salt.
the view from the space walk.
eating without utensils 
is always more convienent. 
my finger nails are home to
potential real estate.
for sale signs grow like tumors 
from the corners of the house
have you met the five-headed dandelion 
& heard what she has to say?
she's promising summer
in the form of a pill. i swallow
most of my medication 
without knowing its names.
all i want is for the fish
to know this kind of delight.
they can't though because they're
on a loop. living gifs.
aquarium plants starting off alive
& turning plastic. i used to believe
in destiny & now all i trust
are cheerios. their perfect portals.
while everyone is distracted
i step through one & end up
on the other side of exaltation.
pixels the size of tangerines.
citrus sting of a good kiss.
no one will remember today
because it might as well have not. 
taking the week out of my ending.
instead, i will blame 
the children who play 
pass the computer. the internet
trying to chart her own family tree
& finding only irises.
whole oceans of them. 

storage units in hell

in the frozen air,
we carry boxes of old windchimes.
everything is a downward spiral.
feathers fall like ash. in hell,
we make due with what we can find.
walk quickly past the forest of doors
& cover our eyes as we crawl beneath
the magnifying glasses
hovering close to the earth.
one thing about underworld 
is you are not told how or why 
you have arrived. instead 
a machine spits stickers
onto your face. marking none of us
can read. constellations that glow
when you close your eyes.
i am a face of charted sins.
as a boy i remember stealing 
at a church bake sale. licking chocolate 
from my fingers as i kneeled
behind the plastic world.
all we want is feast after feast.
taking a flashlight out we search 
the field of storage. endless square breaths.
garage doors sliding open to reveal
rooms of glass horses & 
treadmill gardens. all items confiscated 
from the residents of hell.
a guard will often tease,
"why don't you go looking 
through the storage units"
as if your own were even possible
to be found. i not looking for
what i left behind though. i am searching
for all that could be new.
fill my pockets with black marbles.
steal a chandelier to hang 
from a crooked fire tree near
my sleeping hideaway. today i find 
a unit full of video tapes.
i know the traps of this world
so i do not watch them. in another
i find jars of teeth. pick out a few
that could be useful. in a final one
for the day, i find just a single bunk bed.
it reminds me of one i had when i was 
just a child. the bed breathes shallow & ragged.
i stroke its arms & tell it to rest.
nothing can sleep here. not even
the birds who instead of resting
eventually just catch fire.
i plant two of the teeth in the warm soil.
kiss my thumb before pressing them deep.
imagine them growing into new fresh green
even though i know they won't.
wonder who out there stumbles upon
my storage. my accumulation.
do they delight in my remnants
or shudder? 

homily for the hard candies 

window sugar to be spyglassed.
we looked through each other
& became the saints on the other side
of the stained glass forest.
preaching to the birds,
saint francis said,
"i do not believe 
in any of this." faith is 
a jump rope game. the question is
are you playing double-dutch
or going it alone? i sometimes think
of attending a mass again. 
seeing the old priest
saunter up to the microphone
& make a desert with his mouth.
a bowl of candy hovers 
like a mothership. i unwrap myself
& toss my dresses into a trash can.
my skin, sweet as shoelaces.
this is how to live your
sweet dwindling life. 
a holiday is coming with 
dozens of new doors to worship.
the exit signs held up be cherubs.
he tells us he is hungry for
a fruit tree. for miles
all the apples & the peaches 
turn to sundials. the congregation too
lay shoulder to shoulder 
in a glass bowl. they say 
here is what you asked for lord.
outside i become a dragonfly.
drink nectar from 
a teacupped flower. whisper
to the humming birds, asking 
"how do you live your lives?"
they say, "without guilt."

my mother writes fake obituaries 

from her bedroom of mirrors.
i hear the sound of sirens
turning themselves into apples.
foreheads falling from their shelves.
red is the color of emergency
& i wake up one morning to 
a room of nothing but red. 
childhood made headlines of me.
breaking breaking breaking.
once i cut my finger & nothing but
confetti came out. our neighbor died 
& they held a viking funeral.
flooded the town. loud speakers bloomed
from flag poles to announce 
the world was briefly ending 
but would resume in the morning.
lately, i talk to death 
like a protagonist. i say,
"did i know this man who turned to dirt?"
my mother loves to invent names.
she asks if i know the oldest color 
& i say i don't when i really do.
blue goes to sleep some nights 
& everything is deeper. i dig a grave
to bury my telephone. the newspaper arrives.
we read a mixture of tall tales
& elegies. for years now every day 
opens with elegy. i have said
enough farewells to fill a bathtub.
i ask my mother if she remember
when i died. she hold up 
the newsprint square that describes 
how i died of unnatural causes.
hit in the head with a fallen planet
to be exact. i fold the paper up
& let it melt on my tongue
like a communion wafer. no more god.
no more typewriter. it's just
my mother & i & staircases
to the grey-cloud afternoon.
"no one at all can die today,"
i inform my mother. our bodies
are quadropled by the mirrors 
all around. she accepts this. writes 
fake birth announcements instead.

a bees nest

talking where my lungs could be
i was a dancer in another life 
& i talk to every stripe of myself.
the ribbons falling from branches.
the hive's language becoming one.
i want a cluster but not a chorus.
sometimes i take apart my heart
just to remember how it works.
the bicycle victim to this same practice
lays with its chain strewn.
i often fail to put back together.
laughing a swarm & apologizing
despite the fact that no one else
is even in the room. can i open
the door yet? is there anything 
going on this sunday? not a wing
in sight, we learned to hover 
like only late-stage balloons.
i am wearing pedals for legs.
here is how i move to the next world
& the next. i don't remember
how the nest grew only the after.
isn't that how things always go?
there is a huge looming waterfall
& then there is breathless night.
i can't remember what it was like
to not walk tightropes toward
every single doorway.
help me help me, i say to no one 
but the bees. they are gentle.
all of them say, we are here.
line the walls like inverted stars.
where is the honey i was told 
was coming? i am missing pieces
from my own frantic openings.
the screw driver bites
a portal. i cover my eyes
& spit out abdomens. sixteen.
the bees have no genders
or at least none that they
are willing to tell me. i learn
to breathe over & over like a windmill. 

fried water

i crave the kind of frills
only oil can know. i used to 
measure a cup of frozen french fries 
into their basinette,
lowering them down into 
toiling gold.
summer was hungry for all our fingers.
the burns like deep kisses 
on my hands & wrists.
i worked at the malt shoppe
most weekends. around me
checker boards blinked
& turned. my face, full of moons,
reflected back at me 
in the glass store front windows.
lines of bodies. all their grasping.
eager for extremes. the burning heat
of french fries & corn dogs.
luscious cool of a strawberry cone.
then there was me, ever in transit.
making a life in mouthfuls.
i remember one night 
standing in our small bathroom,
looking in the square mirror
that was just about the size of my face.
i wanted another minute alone
but the people kept coming
escapees from the humid night.
sixteen, i dreamed of slipping
into oil & becoming succulent
& needed. saw oceans of gold flickering.
all of us laying bellies 
to the stars. went back out
& finished the orders. 
smiling with my sidewalk square teeth
until closing.

haunting subscription

for a small monthly fee 
you too can experience the otherworldly.
i hold my credit card up 
to the wild full moon & exclaim
that i would like to sign up
for a haunting. people try
to be specific. ask for grandmothers
or famous artists but 
you cannot tell a haunting what you want.
it is about giving yourself up. i sat 
waiting with my back to the wall.
doesn't it always feel like
someone else is standing right behind you?
that is only the beginning.
the haunting tracing its fingers
across all the surfaces in the house.
it wonders what it would like
to show you. before the haunting 
i believed in being alone. i sulked,
stared up at the ceiling like
it might lift away & give me stars.
now i know i am surrounded. ghost heart beat
in every lightbulb & end table.
my haunting laughs like waving curtains.
drop forks on the floor 
in the middle of the night.
when i go to pick them up
sometimes there's my name
carved into a wall or, just yesterday,
the dining room table. of course there is
the thrilling fear but then 
something else. a comfort. knowing that
nothing is ever complete. 
my haunting once told me 
she milked cows when she was a girl.
told me this in a whisper
when i was in a thought tunnel
about feeling less-than real.
i picture her hands & then they arrive
to turn fresh apples to rot. 
my life is so much more tangible
& yours can be too. there is no reason
to live unhaunted. in fact,
i start to wonder how people do it.
i look around & see their empty windows
& wonder what keeps their inhabitants
stay alive. i am followed 
by so many bare feet. i now sleep in
crowded rooms. all thanks to
the service of the spectral.
i wouldn't want to live any other way.
you can live like this too.
imagine this: cool air on the back
of your neck. goosebumps vine 
up your arms & legs. you see 
an appartition standing in the dining room.
she drops a glass. it shatters
& wakes a coiled piece of your soul
you didn't know you still had.