popsicle-mouthed 

we were newts under out
respective stones. the cool damp
of a flower's shoulder. humming birds
trying to learn to play electric guitar 
in time for winter. the dead deer
are visited at night be forest gods
to ensure the spirit rises.
above the swimming pool antlers collect 
& require a great broom to disperse them.
i made a farm in my closet. grain 
only for myself. holdingt a popsicle stick
out & waiting for sweetness to come.
once i had a neighbor who only ate sugar.
sat on the back porch with a bag
& a spoon. he soon was a butterfly &
then he was just a chrysalis. the desire
to revert. here is where i used to 
dig a coffin-hole. here is where i ate
cream from a stick. calling my mother
in the middle of the night 
to make sure she is alright.
no one holds their phones like babies anymore.
when the sun comes up i put on
a jacket to sheild myself 
from all the arrival. putting the day
back in its plastic wrapper
to save for later. i would like more time
but the heat is here & taking away 
all of our frozen. what's left 
of the ice caps is in our knee caps.
a polar bear clings to a popsicle stick.
three arctic foxes die in
a perfect circle. nature knows 
perfectly well how it wants to fall apart.
this is how i know i am unnatural
or dislodged from my natural.
i walk in circles for hours.
eat popsciles until my mouth is 
a polar openning. each tooth a trigger
or a tombstone. tongue,
a door mat for future amphibaians.

studded belt

linoleum is for fourteen-year-olds only.
i sat at a bench in the mall & counted pigeons
out a glass window. my stomach whirled
like a tornado in a jar. how many hours
can you go without trying to be
a purchase? i practiced kissing my hand.
wrote "i love you" on a bathroom stall door.
wore a studded belt around my neck 
but only in my bedroom. listening to 
an electronic girl. kittens for sale.
the boys in their desire for rubber.
who needs oxygen when you can have plastic?
a barette in the shape of a cow.
imagining myself covered in star tattoos.
what is the meaning of "before."
i am the formerly wonderful. brown hair
in the closet. a dress as long 
as the whole street. corn growing 
from every nook of my future.
i toss pennies in the fountain &
wish for sex with a boy who doesn't know
i'm also a boy. soon enough 
i'll be able to cut off all my hair.
the universe slips through a hole
in my black canvas shoes. everyone 
who is going to love me is a freckle
on the moon. pretzels link arms
in their butter. at home there is 
a pile of dead birds on my desk
i will need to sort through &
a brother in a pill bottle waiting
to be swallowed with water. 
for now though, i am the glint 
every mouth finds when kneeling.
a song on repeat. an aux chord 
in the roof of a mouth. no one meets me.
my phone flips open. i take a picture
the size of a fingernail. 

house of mirrors

my face was a jungle gym 
or an equation to be solved
without division. a nose 
flanked by two trees.
mouths of august & ivy.
i used to take myself apart
& put my tongue out on the clothesline.
waving like a pageant octopus.
what exists but is not spoken 
is a different kind of real. 
this is what it means 
to be my own basket.
a dozen eyes down a hallway
each with her own decision 
to become a something-else.
geese make arrows to be used
on future keyboards. for now
they are flying south 
not for winter but 
for the hell of it. 
i take my something-else-ness
away from the patio where
even the sun has duplicates:
bright & humming. jumping beans
on a shelf all fall to the floor
& jitter. the spotlight 
doesn't notice me & stay green 
until i cough. when the nurse 
draws up blood she only needs
to do it once because
in the mirrors there are 
many many more vials. 
a precision is lost though
between each iteration
& by the last it is the blood
of a dragon. the basement mirrors 
make my face a shadow box.
doll & shoe & birth certificate.
i am a proof machine.
here is the details: i once asked
to see myself clearly 
& from all possible angles.
the next day i woke up
in the house. a mirror for
every fear. a mirror for every
desire. my favorite one
is black. a scrying mirror.
it is the only one who sees
my pupils with clarity.
i keep it covered 
at the back of the refrigerator.
go there & ask
"is this still my face?"
the mirror always answers yes.
what will i do when one day
she, telling the truth,
admits "no" ?

my brother is an opera

made of mirrors & teeth. x-rays 
of jaws bones & spotlights following us
around the house. all of us really 
will be some kind of performance.
i was a quartet & then i became 
a silent film. he sings every word 
& every word is a stepping stone
towards the apocolypse. he assks what should
we tell god when we see her?
i suggest was say that we had instruments 
made of horse hair
& brothers opening their hearts
on the roof. a brother is always 
a site of doubling back. return.
once i had long hair just like him. 
now i wear the skull of stone. he rubs oils
into his beard. dusts off his feet
before putting on socks. i buy 
special binoculars to look at my brother.
i build a baucony from where i can
watch him without the threat 
of becoming part of the story. 
distance is sometimes a demonstration 
of commitment. i am not always a good brother.
operas are always endless. even when he sleeps
he's singing. what's next & next & next.
a trap door in the stage where
he will emerge in a long dress.
his fingers like silk. a piano upsidedown 
& floating towards us down the street.
i wish i could take up more space
when i need a catastophe. become 
another brother in my darkness. 
instead, i find a harp & hold it
like an infant. the opera is never over.
the intermission is a handful of corn.
i tell my brother i love him 
& i try not to sing it. he knows i do.
he knows. a spotlight makes my shadow 
clearer than ever before.
my shadow & his shadow escape
to catch their breath. what if
we were both just voices? 
then we would fit nicely inside a jar.
my soprano. his bass. a blur 
of family. soon he will be older than me. 

strawberry printer

we plugged the sky in & left it running
while we had our hundreds of years.
you were baking in the middle of the night
when you deserved a rest. what started as brownies 
arrived as tiramisu & corn bread. there was 
a new vaccine for loneliness but i was worried
it would eradicate poets so instead 
i built this house & all its machines. 
winter is full of gardens. i had a digital one 
complete with rows of cows. petting their heads
with a cursor. outside another flock of phone books
continued their journey to the great fires.
ash is to ash & dust is to deliberate.
i called an old friend & hung up before 
either of us could say hello. crossed that
off a list. decided i needed strawberries
if i was going to survive. dug holes 
in the drywall, trying to grow a whole wall.
their roots would not take. mice died
from the poison i'd set & their ghosts
scurried across the floor. they overturned 
the planters i tried to cultivate strawberries in.
there were no other options. i had to 
print them from my own longing.
summoning strawberries from my printer.
cord plugged into my throat. they came 
white at first but then riper & riper
until they were real & soft & full of red.
i ate each of them. their juice still warm
from creation. only five of them. i left one
to dangle from a string tied to the ceiling.
the others thrummed inside me like fish.
i was not at all lonely. i was accompanied
by hungry. it became so loud it gained
its own shadow. followed me into bed.
knotted my computer chords. winter is not a season
at least not anymore. it is the blanket
with which i sling the world over my shoulder.
an imperative to stay warm 
making the strawberries i can. 

the butter sculptor

he used to think in metal.
put on his gloves & watched his father
sodder scrap metal into monsters.
their backyard was full of brambles 
& broken wood. living trees tangled
with the dead. his fathers sculptures
were his nightmares. he used 
to look out the window of his childhood
& see them slithering around the yard.
the first image he carved in butter 
was a simple rose. he did so 
with a silver knife at the dining room table.
sectioned off cubes & made each 
a new blossom. contemplated 
what it was about butter that craved
to become new. dreamed all kinds of shapes:
a carousel horse & a dragon 
& a bear laughing on his back. 
taught himself how to work with softness.
this was something his father never knew.
soddering arms into place. saving buckets
of beer bottle caps for eyes. 
the silence between them in the weeks after
his father saw him kiss a neighbor boy
at the end of the street. that boy's hands
like butter in the dark as they took turns
sneaking into each other's bedrooms at night.
he always expected to be caught
but never was. it was a shared understanding
both that he loved other boys 
& that his father would never speak of it.
he would never go so far as to carve
a boy from butter but he did carve hands.
small hands & large hands. these were
the ones he ate. slowly dismantled 
with his own morning toast. 
it is so hard to be fed. people by 
his sculptures now. he takes custom orders:
dogs & cows & horse faces. he craves 
this task of rendering a body 
even soft than it lives. works gently 
in the cold kitchen. tells himself 
"i am nothing at all like my father"
as he traces the shape of an eye 
in the yellow oily surface.
wipes his hands on his work pants
& thinks of the sound of a bottle cap
falling into a bucket.

telephone wife

i pick up the phone to find you
where you live facelessly.
my love is porous. with you
i've found rooms in myself 
i didn't know i could hold.
one for ice cream parlor bowls
& one for broken wine glasses.
before our calls 
i imagine your voice thrumming 
through the cat's cradle 
of telephone lines that nests the sky.
we met by accident. 
me at a telephone booth in berlin.
lost & looking for any kind of mother.
the phone was worn smooth 
from so many hands. i said 
"hilf mir," in a hushed voice
as if the city might hear 
my dislocation. there you were
like a pair of moths. your voice
a silk noose around my wrist,
pulling me back to my front lawn
where a sprinkler chirped 
& a car horn sparkled.
your voice was all it took
to drive the plane 
through clouds. you told me a story
about your hands, how they once
turned into frogs & hibernated
at the bottom of a pond. 
we talked for years 
& when i asked you to marry me
i didn't say, "will you marry me."
i just put the phone to my face
& you said "yes." someday you will
be a body, i am sure of it.
you'll eat a doorframe
with your shoulders. we will
put on a radio & dance
like cake toppers. until then,
i pick up the phone & find you 
where you live facelessly.
your mouth of amythesyt 
& quartz. your sweet round voice.
your unknowable eyes 
like bullseyes. the phone booth
turns upside down. i sometimes
think in german despite 
only traveling for a few weeks.
i still haven't asked where
you're from but i picture 
a small town made of wheat fields.
a windmill at the center.
everyone's voices spilling into recievers
long into the night.

pluck

when i say "one at a time"
i'm talking about feathers
not eyebrows. there are so many birds
to un-bird & i don't have any time.
what is the point of waking up
when you still have all your hair intact?
i find it hard to make peace with
scrambled eggs. was i not the yellow?
i think a turkey would be a good mascot
for america but at least eagles
are able pluck-able. we all take turns
with the bird like a pinata,
each of us hoping to pull
the final feather. beneath
pink flesh screams like a pillow.
when we're done the bird will 
disappear from our minds
like the bowl of cotton balls.
i used to trade eyelashes for dimes
from a man who lived inside a tree trunk.
to uproot the whole fire,
you need a blessing from ground water. 
i point to my mouth & ask to be
fed the remnant. a personal 
garden is waiting inside my face.
swallowing the gate's key. i don't know
if i plan on growing back. invisible holes.
turkeys roam wild. catching song birds
in a net like tuna. in life 
you're either the feather collector
or the feathered & i am not yet sure
which one i am. maybe we're all both.
i cannot remember the color of hair
that used to bloom from my scalp.
now it's just down feathers. soft 
& white & easy to remove.
handful after handful. what to do
with the turkey feathers but
make a monument out of them.
a plaque reads "here is where we go
to remember our hands." i stole 
one feather & keep it in my closet.
when i open the door it dances.
dust on the floor. my eyebrows,
like cliffhangers. i lean so close
to the mirror it becomes a pond.
tell me when it's april again.
i need that certain light.

glass eye 

we took our empty faces 
to the basement. fill the universe 
with the kind of sight you want.
there are so many people walking around
with pebbles in their face. 
they can hear the metamorphosis 
but then they never notice the dinner bells
as they chirp across electric wires.
tell me, what are you hungry for?
i want to feed the night sky marbles.
lie to the stars, saying
"these are my many eyes."
gobbling them. visions of fire 
& shape. iciles becoming teeth.
the family jewels are a pair of eyes.
glasses for seeing the highway signs.
my exit is always just before
the glowing elbows of god.
i'd like to place my sight 
on a pillow & set it at the feet 
of a great chasm. don't tempt me again
with falling. my glass eyes tell me stories
of ripening clouds & plumetting pianos.
we once found a trumpet in the closet.
i stuck my hand into the bell
just to find a little mouse without eyes.
he covered his face & we gave him
blueberry to see out of. 
i used to have a neighbor 
who didn't believe in glass.
he grew cherry tomatos on his porch.
said they were the only real way to see.
living through the rot just to replace them.
he held out a handful & ask if i wanted to try.
i ran away. comforted by
the smoothness of glass. the angles 
rolling glass with their firey hands.
i look at the planets with my own
little skulled moons. still,
i wonder what my neighbor saw.
some nights i caught a glimpse of him
standing on his back porch
& grinning at the tundra.

horse sleep

i learned how to sleep standing up
because someone had to watch
the front lawn for lions.
in the living room, the sheep had dreams
of us becoming wealthy off their wool.
they kept department store catalogs
& circled every gadget they wanted:
air fryers & freeze dryers &
a singing washing machine.
if i'm being honest with you 
i wanted those trinkets too.
wanted sliver & glossy apparatus
to make a home for us. 
i taught myself by watching horses.
walked out to the farmers 
& observed their tall slumber.
my knees became bottlecaps. my arms,
pinwheel blades. how different a machine
the body is when perpendicular.
really though, i want to be
a flying carpet. i want to live
horizontally the way the sun 
buds like a new tooth. 
tonight, wool fills every closet of our house.
the sheep went to school 
with lunch boxes of feed.
they came home & slept like buttons.
a horse is always a father unless
it is being led to water,
then it is a son. i was always
a son. holding my breath,
i'm waiting for sleep to make
a statue of me. blinking my eyes
i catch one lion & then two.
the world is full of lions.
or else maybe they were just
the shadows of pickup trucks.
it is always better 
not to chance it.