teeth-making

i went down to the quarry 
where biplanes go to die
to look for stone. my mouth
was a new wound. echoed like
lake water. refused to grow teeth.
every night i would 
press my thumb to the roof
of my mouth in the hopes
of inspiring migrations.
i have tried many materials:
wooden & fur & graphite.
taking my tool-set to carve 
each obelisk. when i was a child
we played ghost in the graveyard 
in our father's mouth.
he risened blue & spat us all
into the sink. i left a glove
stuck between two of his teeth.
when i make my own
i always think of him, carrying 
buckets of coal into a fire.
how his teeth were sometimes,
on the right night, just blue flames.
tongue scorched from repetition.
i choose grey stones. fill my pockets.
theft is almost always neccesary
for building. these rocks 
are not mine just as 
they are not the quarry's 
just as they are barely even
belonging to the earth. we were all
a product of one great pressure
be it gravity or gender 
or chewing. i want to eat 
like the gods do: fed by
a gentle follower's hands. 
instead i squat, pigeon-like 
amoung the rubble looking 
for potential teeth. set them
in my mouth one by one. 
ask a passing snake 
what he thinks as i grin--
my smile a half-finished puzzle.
he is too polite to comment.
what you should know though
is there was no original teeth.
i have to make them
just like my father does 
from pencils & broken glass
& plundered cuff links.
open wide to a passing flock above.
airplanes headed to their burials.
they spell "not yet"
in the wonder-blue sky. 

postcards

written on leaves 
& napkins & sometimes only breath,
i am given elsewhere missives
from planets long ago, now,
salted & turned inside out.
they are simple prayer pillows.
"hello, this is your lover."
"have you ever seen
the waterfalls
of planet 9?" there is
not much room on a postcard.
only enough to squeeze 
one glossy yearning. one
moment of awe. most i recieve
are from long long ago.
before the earth was dirt,
back when every want pulsed red
& the oceans were still
drawing themselves like a bath.
you have to understand, 
i lie often in my real life.
can i blame that on being
a storyteller? when i speak
often i mean, "wouldn't it be great
if this is how it was?"
yarn spills from my lips
so i collect them in skeems. mostly,
i hope postcard writers
are lying to me. i hope
these are all just lonely inventions
& not true signals 
from an other side.
thresholds waiting to sigh.
i collect them beneath 
my tongue. one after another 
after another. sometimes 
their voices reach my skull
where they flit like parakeets.
"i wish you were here
in a space ship made of gold."
"we should go here someday."

quell

we opened yolkless 
in the glow of each rise.
light coming thick & lumbering.
we tired giving the sun
new names. "sweet brother"
& "furnance" & "fig tree."
hoped that might keep her going 
just another year.
imagined what one more 
skirt hem could bring us.
photographs to be singed
& turned to comet scarves.
watched our edges seep into
every furrow & forgetfulness.
i remembered i was supposed to
be worried about the house's bones
& i was supposed to check 
for the thousandth time
if the dead trees caught fire.
touching their torsoes.
little eyes peered
from every crease. in bed
our shadows turned indigo
then sapphire. gem-like
in the last days. i thought only 
of spoons & mixing. 
how my mother used to 
work her hands in a belly
of dough. everything begins 
like this. everything 
end like this. with omens
catching each other's ankles.
the mailbox grew a devil's tail.
your family stopped visiting.
were turned into crows
who now forage in the trash cans
behind our apartment. 
it feels like 
we could have had much more.
but then again we could 
have had less. scooping 
a sugary bit of light.
feeding you a spoonful,
i say, "let's take bets
on how many more mornings
are left."

last year of sunflowers

we wasted the yellow
tossing it up in the air
like an infant. instead,
we could have held more
beam & glisten. i bought you 
everything our land could hold.
a tree of pearls. silk worms
for mending ever scism 
in our post-helicopter skin.
taking the fine china
out of cabinet for
a wedding attended only
by ghosts. we should have
at the very least, washed out faces
in the glow. all your freckles
turned to mouse feet.
there was one on every block
that year. sunflowers laughing,
throwing their heads back.
all sunflowers 
are boys. did you know that?
i didn't until it was too late.
here i was saying 
"she is dead she is dead she is."
once one said to me,
"you would make a wonderful 
monument." i nodded.
i would. i consider it sometimes
when you leave your socks out
like unskilled coin purses.
i had a jar left. just a smear.
the yellow humming 
with memories of opening 
in april. i make a fist 
& let it relax. extend fingers wide.
hold a snake skull. eat
a golden apple where once
used to live our coupling.
i mistake insects for seeds.
carried a lady bug
all the way to the bowl of soil.
pressed her into the dirt,
dreaming she could become
another flower. perfect
as i used to see your lips.
instead, i watch 
as she crawls free.

bootleg noise

i was your radium-faced lover.
god licked his brush
to make me glow. then, inside my body 
he left a cannibal capsule.
i devour my own time 
without a fork & knife.
the sharks fury at the shoreline.
if only if only. breaking a window
with a brick & yelling
"please be quiet!" the window
is my face. my face is 
a newly painted ceiling. 
hailing a taxi on a suburan street
free of taxis. in this heaven
no one drives. only the station wagon
that collides with a family tree.
drunk of dead apples. i've been
faking it for as long as i can remember.
tape recorder. organ-player 
in the basement. a video camera lives
on all fours just inside the closet.
keeping a diary just to watch 
as the diary sprouts insect legs
& refuses all sense. i had a type writer
i would use to aide in my own
unraveling. typing "please" 
until there was no more ink.
a record player in the living room
singing with the urgency 
of an ambulance. i sometimes
give up on sound entirely. 
wonder what i would have to do
to empty myself of its nails.
how it burrows in every ache 
my body has to offer.
sleeping off the tundra
just to find even my blessings
beneath the water. i ask 
a friendly ghost
to turn the record over. 
alas the other side is worse
as it usually goes. 
i fill my mouth with pennies
& walk as far away from 
the gramophone
as i possibly can. 

record store date

neither of us had a player
or a needle to spare.
his stomach, full of flat hands
& mine with grubs.
it rained often that spring 
& i made my legs as bare
as possible. shaving them 
in the gummy bathtub.
Pink girl-razor smell.
i looked for nirvana because
they seemed old enough
to have records. stared curiously 
at the schemes of symbols
album art yields: gritty space ships,
dancing bears, & close-ups
of beautiful girls. i collected them
for future references, memorizing
band names. repeating, pink floyd 
& the doors & the misfits
like an incantation. i followed him
as he lifted each disk.
held them up as if 
they were old friends.
why did i believe him? to be fifteen
is to trust everyone's hands too much
& your own not at all. sometimes
at restaurants he would hand feed me.
stroke me head. i wanted to be glass.
i wanted to be a bell. kissing me 
every few feet. sublime playing
on the store's speakers. 
then, a beaded door
at the back of the shop
with a sign that said 18+.
he lied, saying he'd gone back there
many times. i nodded, 
like he'd said something sacred.
cassettes lay in lines
forming a dark grin. i thought,
don't look at us. outside
it poured. we circled the store again.
no where else to take
my need to be filled
which is of course also
a need to emptied. he took my wrist
& said, "let me tell you
let me tell you" & he thronged
my face with everything 
i already knew. 

when the giants came

i was wearing a steel hat
& silk gloves. "prepared for anything,"
i said. tuesday wouldn't come
& thus neither could the end.
so, here i am,
kissing another boy 
on a match head. that is what
it feels like to live right now.
sometimes the news arrives
simply as a maroon trumpet.
geese migrate from living room
to living room. i feed them 
handfuls of pearls.
nothing is beautiful anymore 
because i say so. that is except
for you my love who has been sleeping
so long you're stone. i refuse
to move or else i will never see
your eye lids again.
my body is a tapestry of hideaways.
i carved a hole in an apple
& watched the earth shake.
giants, more every single day.
their faces like fists.
books leap from shelves.
slumbering in the middle 
of the streets. in a body that big
there's no where around here
to settle. i want to invite them in
& destroy all the smallness
i've built. we baracade the door
even though the giants could just
snap it open. ritual is often
what we do to immitate safety.
lighting candles as if 
a fire could not rise
to inhale us all. i name the giants 
after past mountains long converted
to women. i have a tendancy towards
loving that which can kill me.
carving my ribs into paring knives
& my teeth into pills. 
i can't help it. this is 
my catastrophic alchemy.
the giants came eager & ready. 
this is more than i can say for us.
maybe they know 
what to do with my bones.

goldilocks

in my gender i am one of three bears.
i cull the forest for freeways.
hitchhike like only a devil can.
when i was small i snuck away often
in search of something beauitful
to devour me. i cut off my hair
in slices. fed each to a ghost
who lived in a rotted tree.
to invite yourself in to every vacancy 
is to decide there is no such thing
as righteous empty. the nothing
belong in the hands of angels
who have more experience with hollow.
instead, young & fearless,
i drank from fountains of mud.
slept in the beds of monsters
only to find mirrors above 
my slumber. there i was full of teeth
staring right up. the animals
emerging in me. my pelt hung 
on the bedframe. pink & un-skinned.
i could have been demolished.
collected all three of my tears
from the hard wood floor. 
in another room a mother is always
readying her rope. a father is 
forgetting the important 
of his ring of keys. a baby is
trimming the edges off gender.
rolling a ball through the thick woods.
just to have it returned
by the bear versions of ourselves.
of foraged my way through autumn.
light under my fingernails.
shaved my head until 
my hair grew back brown.

in the jungle of fathers

a telephone is a machete.
all plants spit bottle caps 
instead of seeds. i am just
a daughter-son. to be a child
is to always be searching
for a talisman to age you.
or, at least, this is how i lived.
cutting down brush asking
"hello?" as if a father might
empty himself at any moment.
i am in his wallet. i am 
a wooden bicycle in his garage.
the car stares with gem-cut eyes.
kneeling in rich soil
to look for a purity ring.
he checks my glass self.
breaths to fog the surface.
we would eat & talk as if
he wasn't the whole fucking forest.
forks in tree necks. a paradise bird
who says, "he's home,
he's home." when will i get to be
a commander? which is to say
when will i get to be my father?
this is not something 
i actually desire but i want
to step through it like a membrane.
eating the depth's overripe fruit.
sick on orange. he has every antidote.
syrup on my hands. i am 
an evidence machine. here i was
here i was here i was.
he tells the canopy he is busy.
puts his hand on my back,
plucks out a single vertabrae 
from my spine to use 
as a nut. says, "you asked
for this body, did you not?"

metal salad

we spooned the factory.
said "goodnight" to our old bodies.
bionic tongue & a firework 
bursting in the fridge.
all i wanted when i was fourteen
was to make monuments 
to my visible bones. let robots 
skii across every vertabrae.
red button on my neck blinking
"catastrophe." he kissed it
like a mole. i sit 
tearing a piece of foil off
& wadding it up in my mouth.
i'd chew like this, looking
for flower meat or other 
sustenance. a bouquet of forks.
swallowing a knife whole.
my boyfriend watched me 
like a doctor. i filled my skull
with tarantulas. they programed
a video game where balloons 
hit the ceiling & you have to
try to rescue them. a pixel 
replaces the snow flake 
& our hunger is never the same.
i prefer copper but will settle
for nickle if i must. 
snacking on coins by a fountain.
long ago, i took to becoming
my own pool for wishing. 
i drop sacrifices into my heart
to watch the ripples. surfaces
bleed without warning. now there is
a hammer head on the kitchen table.
everything can be a murder weapon.
metal alphabets are the only way
i can even say, "i need you"
or "i love you." my love is
steel-toed & walks unsturdy. 
we split the gold ring for lunch.
a portal forever waxing in my chest.