proctor

i'm losing points for cheating.
checking the work of previous monsters.
he follows me with a criteria.
this is how to be examable.
i put my palms face-up on the table.
are you good enough to be a statue today?
my mouth fills with ink. i still have dreams
of four cornered rooms where
every voice is mercury. i try & try
to solve a number sentence 
but the answer is always zero.
how easy would it be to just 
sit on my knees & ask god 
for a bolt of lightning. burning 
the old text books. filling in the letter "b"
for every single answer. he crosses 
his arms. this is all too on the nose
isn't it? but i am telling the truth.
this man lives with me. has a square jaw.
does not have a father or a mother.
when given power, is a body 
still it's matrix of blood & hallways?
i think not. i think we can become 
obelisks. i'm losing letters.
i'm failing basic skills.
this is a pie graph of my face.
25% my father 30% left over
& the rest unaccounted for.
do not ask me to math. "i am trying"
i tell him which we both know
is unknowable. i live in
a series of thresholds. here is where
i pass. there is where 
i start to become too weird 
for the word "mingle." really,
i try to usually not cheat but
we all write the answers
on our thighs sometimes, right?
my opinion is invent whatever you need 
to make it through the seams. 
everything is sewn shut.
even the exam room. the proctor 
gets a drink of water from the sink.
doesn't take his eyes off me 
as he swallows. his washing machine eyes.
he blinks before we both curl
like dead leaves. he says,
"you have minutes left." i can't focus
the dream is a suitcase now.
i am filling it with tomorrow. 
testing booklets arrive only as birds.
he is gone. i am eating a bowl of cereal.
the sun is printed on white paper. 

refrigerator 

tell me we can survive another.
the cow comes apart in continents
& i place my heart in plastic wrap
like any other meat. i'm studying
methods of salvation 
that don't involve jesus or god.
think of strawberries growing
in winter. their plastic mobile homes 
& fingers pulling each from their necks.
nothing, not even sweetness 
is sacred. if i had a garden 
i would teach my flowers
to bloom only in the dark. 
keep your faces & your tongues separate.
i do want what i was promised 
in the gold hurry of a church.
to be lifted like a basket 
of oranges towards a cool shining attic. 
only i want there to be no conditions.
if the question is whether or not
i've been holy. i have not.
i have never tried. my life is 
spiritual like the mushroom's ankles.
lifting them from a bowl in the fridge.
remembering they once told trees
their folk stories. eating their stories
before walking out into the early dark
of february in my black rain boots.
i consider the ice box in the sky.
angels wearing parkas beside 
tubs of yogurt. something always seemed
too sterile for me. i do not believe in hell
but i think it must be a garden.
wild though--not agrarian. 
plants kissing each other. 
our wandering hands. caressing while standing
in the warm soil. nothing to be 
packaged or promised. nothing without stains.
oh how i want to be saved
by a place like that. 

god of flowers

tell me how to lose the pinwheels 
of my face. i build guillotines
for the necks i've used.
gather in a pouch a handful 
of cinnamon & the scabs of a 
yellow rose. gift me a mirage of wings.
i want to be the angel 
just for a night. wear glass skin
& press my lips to the cool dirt.
tell soil, "here's a daffodil"
& "here is a dandelion."
sometimes i look in the mirror
& my whole face bursts into 
needles. i touch the skin. 
knick my fingers. ask to see
the carnation or at least the rose.
my eyes are watering holes
for snakes. they come. 
your messengers. i want a body 
without so many seasons.
to want a body that doesn't change
is to want no body at all.
if i could then be a grove 
or maybe just one flower's spire.
i crave all the smallness 
the world took from me.
i met you only once. ambled down
to the creek where trout
gossip & wait to be fished.
kneeled down & gazed into the water.
there you slept just beneath 
the surface. i said,
"tell me how to drown alive."
you kept sleeping. were you cadavered?
clouded by algae. lips as blue bells.
i was the girl worshipper. cut my hair.
planted each strand & waited.

air bnb on the moon

tell me this is temporary.
that one day i will wake up 
to a bowl of fresh strawberries
& earth will be a head of hair.
i look out the portal 
to see the darkness as thick
as grease. stars speaking
their old languages. i used to want
the distance to dance like veils.
used to hold a telephone 
to every door. this is the nest
of the oldest hermit. a woman 
with five-thousand years 
of loneliness. no pictures 
on the walls just rings of salt
in every room. a cottage
the size of a thumb. i think maybe
i could purchase her life.
lead my own wandering into hers.
what do i have to do to get
my perminant vanishing?
i'm putting on my suite 
to walk in search of a dandelion
for conversation. on the moon 
sentences are written by distance.
could we orbit today then?
step forward through dust.
animal shadow. songs of dead species.
all the while, you sit on earth
& maybe drink water
or watch television or 
close your eyes for a second too long.
tell me i can have a beautiful life.
give me the oldest ocean 
dried for lack of fingers.
a flock of strings pluted
to make an orchestra. i have
one more day here before 
i have to become a girl again.
all the clocks say different years.
i take a bath in sunlight.
feel the cottage exhale. 
go out one last time to stare
at my own foot prints leading away
into the galaxy's purple-black.
help, i don't want to go back 
to my stained-glass life. 

we have to keep the trees asleep

because what if everything moved
green-lizard fast. i feel my heart
darting beneath every rock it can find.
we are so unprepared. my shoes 
are coming apart. i am far-sighted
& at a distance trees always look like
they're linking arms. they have been sleeping
but that doesn't mean a wrong sound
couldn't wake them up & then 
we'd have all kinds of new small talk. 
i rehearse almost all conversations
& i try to imagine their outcomes.
make lists of "if they say this, i'll."
would the trees want houses? i walk 
ten blocks to the park just to press
my hand to one of my favorite trees.
thick trunk. forked at the neck. 
a shoe hands from one of her arms.
i don't have a plan for what i would say
if suddenly she spoke back.
this alarms me. there should always
be a plan. maybe, "did you have 
any dream?" lately my dreams have been
too all-knowing. laying down,
i always get the sensation of falling.
as if i'm the newly oranged leaf 
& soon i'll be a part of autumn's quilt.
is a leaf like a eyelash or a child
to the tree. i guess this is conversation.
i don't want her to wake up though.
if i were beautiful & still 
& didn't need fingers i would want
to stay like that. i wonder if
it's too late to get in on what they have.
give me each season like a haircut.
my skin is as dry as bark. 
a bird comes to nest even though
it's not even close to spring.
i am eager & afraid of every 
merri-go-round. what will we do 
with all their roaming? how do we
even manage our own? i sometimes
tie myself to the radiator to ensure 
i don't wander too far off
in a fit of elsewheres. before leaving
i tell the tree, "you can sleep 
at my house if you wake up."
simultaneously i'm thinking
"no. i don't have any room."
this is how we have to offer so much
of our love. if we must. if we must.
i want to give the way apples fall
if not plucked. swelling globes 
of my sugar. does anyone at all
live like that?

traveling salesman

i want him to knock on my door
& sell me the big purchase.
a basket of wooden parables.
tell me i am finally the fox 
& not the crow. grapes grow
from the ceiling. i say, "feed me"
to no one at all. do you ever feel
like god is making an example of you?
yesterday i was sold a package 
golden biblical gloves. they turned out
to not be golden or holy. 
i'm still wearing them. stylish at least.
it's not worth trying not to be scammed.
instead, i lean into the spending.
a man with a top had full of mice.
he knocks on my bed room door.
says, "i have just what you need
to forget." i buy all his glass eyes
& a remote control to a dead tv somewhere.
i crave the uselessness of window objects.
the unplugged lamp. the neighbor children
who laugh like they aren't just
figments of my imagination. i don't have
a roof. i just have a simulated forehead.
i'm getting carried away now
& saying too much. what i mean is
if not for him then how would i know
what it is i'm missing. he says,
"slide flute" & "electric blanket."
i thank him & pay him in quarters.
there's nothing left of the backdoor
just the bell. i wear it around my neck.
each year i believe less & less
in homes. that is just my body.
"would you like the last clarinet?"
he asks. how could i turn that down.
we all want to be chosen or at least
a little special. i cradle the clarinet
like a son. lay him down in a bed
of hay. he is back asking 
if i am still looking. i am. oh how
i am looking. we sit together
& wait for the instrument to fall asleep.
morning comes like frayed wires.
he tells me he doesn't meant to do this.
it is just all he knows. i tell him it is
the same with me. i pay him to sleep
while i walk a circle around
where used to be the make-believe house. 

backdrop

knitting a tornado into field.
we told the horizon to have more shoulders.
sometimes i forget there is
a sky. airplanes aren't real.
or, at least, not anymore. instead
they are the memories of the distance
we could not bear. what can we make
to fill the empty out there?
i used to think i could walk far enough
to escape the sound of the tea pot
but now i know they blossom everywhere.
a telephone rings & no one has telephones anymore.
once, my father opened the window
& throw a handful of bottle caps
at the moon. they stuck in her face.
the moon is my face one nights
like that. a man landed on my 
& stuck a flag in my eye. this was not
a love story. though many people think love is
about laying claim & being claimed.
i want to be less landable. i want
people to circle my mountains on a map
& say, "we have to be careful
when we pass over here." i spit a storm
the color of bruises. the smell of copper.
blood of the rivers. when was the last time
you bathed in a curtain? took the light
& threaded ribbon through each dart.
a spotlight falls & becomes
just a dead bird. who wouldn't want
to be a sacrificed language?
no one but the foxes are watching.
they have a hole cut in the clothe
for going between here & the other side. 

picnic basket

you wanted two of everything
& for you i became an arch.
two forks. two blankets. two mouths.
the geese set candles out
on the edges of the pond.
night came like spilled nectar.
skin sugared, the bugs came 
with their lovers. mosquitos 
& ants & gnats. i thought you were
going to ask to make a wine glass 
of me. instead you kissed me
like a bowl of blackberries.
stains. the picnic open, i thought
if only i could crawl inside
& become just an ornament.
a folded blanket. a tiny white plate.
to be a gender is to be told 
over & over again what you are useful for.
pleading for you 
to carve a forest around me. 
your love of knives. darkness coming
sooner than we thought. i whispered
that we should take shelter 
in the picnic basket. you were stubborn.
until i mentioned we were
one of both kinds: a concave 
& convex mirror. you loved to be
any kind of pair. & so we slipped in.
listened as the night tied 
all its loose ends. foot fall 
of gods. the police car shining a light
in the car window & telling us
to put our lives back on. 
my gender was all over. mosquitoes 
who left jewels across my shoulders.
the picnic basket's half-eaten worlds.
red apple. ripe melon. 
me asking to drive us home 
& you saying, "no, i need to."
a cracked window. ants with their lovers.
two painted turtles underneath
the pond's water gossiping about
what they saw of us. 

filaments 

when the birds died
we collected them 
in a glass holy-goblet.
blew on them softly 
until they turned to light.
still though, on the right afternoon
i will turn on a fire 
& hear a thousand wing-beats.
nestlings falling toward flight.
during the years without a sun
we had no idea what each other looked like.
spent our days re-telling 
the stories of our lives
until they were as short 
as a sentence each. "i caught a devil
in the creek rocks" &
"my mother couldn't remember my name"
& "without the smell of lavendar 
i'd be dead." i want to learn
to catelog my losses without 
living only for them. this is 
easier said than done. here is where
the birds died. we have light
because the birds folded inward
& opened orchidly onto the room.
my sentence is "i was a girl
& then i was a boy & now i am
a prophet." i saw feathers
behind my eyelids since before
i knew what they were called--
thought of them as collected eyelashes.
i try to blink as often 
as possible. pretending what i see
is a series of photographs.
one following the other.
maybe there is a lake kept by the gods
where a polaroid of every second lives.
if i could i spend the rest of my days
swimming there in search 
of an image of the last bird.
her wings are what make
every shadow in me. i would steal
her image for myself. maybe slip it
beneath my pillow as i slept.
absorb some of that boundlessness.
commiserate over our desires
to fracture in illumination.
a loon calls as i turn on my desk lamp.
outside, a flock of yesterdays
passes beneath the always. 
i take a picture of my hands
& add it to the inventory.

wind chime maker

at first i used only bones.
tied them to the end of each finger.
standing scare-crow 
on the porch i waited for a breeze
to talk to me. there are theories of air.
gods gathered whispering 
or the wing beats of extinct birds.
ghost foot steps. a motion
of a secret coming undone.
i tend to believe a gust of wind
is all of these combined.
once, in the night i woke
to find an angel's feather
on my nightstand. the beast hovered above me
& shone his myriads of eyes.
he said, "i want to talk to someone"
then blew all the papers form my desk.
now, i pluck ancient words 
from gales. hang spoons & pans.
destroy what it means to "chime"
& make it cacophonous. a clatter meaning
"once i was a girl who fell from a cliff"
or "my hands shake whenever i see you."
i used to think i wanted to learn
from the wind. now, i am more interested
in conversations as comrads.
i told a grey storm last year
"i'm not supposed to be so depressed"
& the storm responded by playing
the wooden chimes. a downpouring
of hooves. she meant, "we all feel
like becoming bed sheets somedays."
i don't know if that is true.
i distrust all statements that begin
"we all." we don't all. the wind 
is interested in closure. on this also
we disagree. shutting again the front foor
which i wish to keep as wide open
as possible. when the angel comes again
i want to be standing & ready. 
i want to ask, "is there a process
for playing the wind?" then 
"if so, one day, will you have me."