boundaries machine

i want you to know i don't begin 
where you end. i begin 
in dwindling october daylight
when the plow drivers 
shut off their monsters.
there both our bodies 
are the eldest corn stalks.
our roots are a love language. 
i am always knitting a field 
where my chest used to be.
use gorilla glue to fix
paper wings you made me.
put them back in place.
fly as desperate as late season bees.
cut corners. crimp hallways
into rippled paths. 
raise my translucent fences
with signs that say "i want to be
entered." make yourself at home
& stay awhile. there are berries
wash & ready. 
i have the boundary machine running
in case i fall in love with you.
then, the device will
slip us both into glass boxes
& you know what they say
about people in glass boxes.
stealing a pair of your socks.
snipping off a lock of
you hair to feed my lantern.
what keeps you up at night?
i think in cyclones about
how sometimes i send a thought
like a paper airplane 
to your ear & it comes out
of your mouth. it's like
i am a river & you are a river
& here we are parceling out water.
when i see you i want to say
"please take my house."
i don't have a house. 
doors drop dead. you ring
a bell outside on the street.
my machine roars alive. 
puts my heart in a hope chest
with blankets & a wedding dress. 
come here anyway. let's break windows
& chairs tables & altars.

popcorn room

in my heat incarination 
i learned how to speak pure
& without any kernels. 
opening the door to the room
at the top of the highest staircase.
our house of catastrophies
& trophies. who is the greatest
grimace of them all. who can bare
the weight of earthworms
as they find their way
out of the spigot. instead,
here is the play dungeon.
exactly where nothing matters 
but depth. mice feed 
on the underbellies of clouds
but not here. this is 
the purity room for those for whom
purity was never an option.
pure like gems & never like bodies
because there's no such thing.
butter machine in the corner.
wading through the field of 
mindless flowers. do you remember
how you discovered your particular 
rupture? i was imagining 
a dandelion's ancient head
& a boy blowing all the seeds
free into the wind. he was 
a boy just like me. chest smiling 
with scars. not a single tuft left. 
it's about clearing space & what is removed
to open it. my heart's drain plug.
pull me out of the fire. pull me
out of the pile. no more shoes.
no more neckties, only
the crispness of popcorn under foot.
i was born in a paper bag
then carried to a scale to be weighed.
we all know the room is there
but to speak of it would be
to diminish its lure. describe for me
exactly how you like to season your air.
i inhale sugar twine.
as god to bind my hands 
behind my back & push the door closed
with his booted foot. 

my father is making bernie sanders

sitting on the edge of his seat
with a jar of model paint & a tiny brush. 
i come home to try & dig myself
from a delgue of winter depression.
my father has glasses he never wears 
& a necktie hanging from the ceiling fan.
he mows the lawn. he finds himself 
often in folding chairs. three bernie sanders
& then five. i ask him what he plans
to do with the bernie sanders & he says
"sell them." the sun goes orange.
i come to witness his creations alone.
a congregation. a flock. bernie's crossed legs.
dad says, "no one
wants to work anymore." his hands 
are leathered from being half man
& half conveuyer belts. he drives
a dying red van. says prayers 
it will start in the morning cold. 
takes off his shoes like caskets.
his pale feet. i tried phone banking once
for bernie sanders. they coached us to
"tell the caller why bernie matters to you."
i thought of my father but could never 
find a narrative. half the time i hung up
out of fear. he paints bernie's hands
with precision & care. are they 
his children? rows & rows of bernie figures.
more sizes now all sitting 
on a windowsill in the sun room.
do we all want to save our fathers?
i want to ask for one to keep. a father
or a bernie statue, i'm not sure which. 
set on a shelf in my house. my own
bernie sanders. when my father looks at them
what does he see? he keeps making more
& has not sold a single one 
nor is he trying to. i am often proud
of my father. he drinks a beer
reading a book on world war one. 
he does not cross his legs 
but he does furrow his brow.
often he'll say, "i'll be dead soon"
to which any surrounding family members
will say, "no no stop" unsure of what else 
could thwart my father's efforts.
in the dark i visit the bernies again.
hold one in my hand before placing it back
amoung his brothers.

planting

i lost a tooth while chewing 
on a comet. stuck a sunflower seed
in its place & waited with my mouth open.
sprawled out in the backyard like
a garden house. angels came & stood
in a perfect circle to inspect my body.
batted their myriad of eyes.
this is what i do for the sake 
of perminance. the empty space
cannot be empty. stuffing cardboard 
into the windy closet. once my gender
was a piece of insulation. then, winter
attested to the thickness of our walls.
i wore nothing but a bra in the mirror.
the mirror softened to silk & all of a sudden
i was screen-printed. the flower took root.
dug deep into my skull with her ankles.
reminded me of other people's sisters.
their distant glory & long hair
& hair-tie around the wrist. 
every street funnel into my mouth.
bees asked each other about yellow.
one great sunflower standing straight.
my tongue's new neighbor. bitter taste
of new families. an emptiness once filled
goes somewhere else. my tooth hole now
waits as a wide open shoe box 
or maybe a hollow dress-pocket.
travels with determination & lust.
what does it mean to contain nothing?
my uterus believes in the future.
fills herself with peach pits.
i tell her it's only a matter of time
before i press a sunflower seed
into her mouth too. spitting out sun.
taking three big gulps of water. 
is it selfish to decide every opening
can hold a ladder? i build another
from steam. another from syrup.
standing in the mouth of a sunflower now.
standing & waiting for sunset 
when the dark makes us all 
thankfully less tangible.

harvest time

that year the fields burst with one limb.
the sky bled purple all through summer 
by the time the dirt was ready,
ripened to a deep eggplant october.
we were never sure what would grow. 
i remember being small & one year 
we culivated acres of squash the shape
of goose necks. in another memory 
my father hauls grape fruit in a basket
from the yard. it is always a comprise.
you cannot get exactly what you want
from a field. crops are a combination
of the will of god & alchemy.
we had scattered juju bees in the soil
hoping for fruit. my mother pinned
a picture of an apple tree to the door.
she bought a pie dish. my father craved lemons.
he painted the bright yellow fruit 
on the walls of the living room.
it was my fault then i think. i asked 
for softness no fruit could manage
imagining myself kissing boys 
just like me. running with them through
the barren field in winter. snow in their hair.
boys like me. short boys with plum-small hands.
& so hands rose from the dirt. first just 
fingertips. the whole family went out
to inspect them to be sure we'd seen right.
yes, fingers. july deepended & hands rose
to the middle of the palm. alone,
i caressed them. the hands never moved
but they were warm. then, by october,
whole arms reaching for a corner of sun.
i laid down in the hands & let them graze
my skin. my whole family knew then 
what i wanted. i could not face them.
this field of my longing. how has desire
emerged so alive? held a fresh hand 
& kissed its back before slipping inside.
waiting for the year to close
& the field to once again by nothing
but a possibility. after the arms though
i knew the field listened more closely
than i'd thought before. there was then maybe
no delightful randomness but rather
a knowing. the earth hearing our bodies
& responding with whatever kind of growth
it could muster. was the field a mirror 
or a response? i saved a hand from that year.
it sleeps in a shoe box in the back of the closet.
withers to bone.

helmets

we flea-marketed our defenses.
found them in a pile of army-green.
everything in the world was 50% off that day.
tried them on & used each other's eyes
as mirrors. saw myself in the circuits
of your iris. a race track moving 
always towards the unknown. the war 
went on so long that we didn't know 
where the boundaries were. often
whole battles were fought inside 
an individual. standing there hearing
a horse gallop through my own heart.
how could it be we were all ghosts?
or, maybe worse, maybe war is what
makes ghosts of us. in my helmet though
i felt safe & so did you. bombs bounced
off my skull & found another body
to destroy. there is a law of the 
conservation of catastrophy: if you avoid
annihilation, it is coming for someone else.
the helmet then is a selfish apparatus.
it makes me feel dolphin & i grip
both its edges with my thumb & forefinger.
only at night do i remove it 
to gaze inside & see a cathedral ceiling 
complete with choir song. you use yours
as a bowl. fill it with lake water
& go fishing. pull a trout to earth.
wriggling in the grass. you ask
"should i throw him back?" but it is
too late. there is no backwards 
when it comes to water. i do not share
my helmet like you do yours.
a missile grazes our skin while we sleep.
we know only by a streak of purple 
drawn across our left cheeks.
kisses of death. i strap the helmet back on.
i can feel a battle blooming
just on the other side of the street. 

talking cactus

i watered my fingers
only when they turned needle.
walked eighteen miles 
in the ghastly forest-desert 
to consult a field of talking cactus.
i wore my purse like a necklace
& counted my savings. coins 
turned locus in my hands.
another plague is always 
just around the corner. what can
a boy-girl do but look toward leather
for durability. sharpen their knives
on the moon. "what must be done
will be done," says the first cactus,
arms like a goal post. face as silent
as the side of a mountain.
the next suggests, "have you tried
closing your eyes & counting 
to one-thousand." i have no 
& do no plan to. keep thinking
i should have asked a river 
what i should do with my body.
cactus are prone to optimism. 
i can't decide if bright sides 
are still a thing. is there 
anything good in the garage?
earth tilts more than she should
& i feel it. kneel down 
to try to adjust it same as
a crooked picture frame 
but it seems like everyone is 
comitting to being askew 
for the forseeable future.
another cactus says, "everything 
is wrong..." i plug my ears
& i'm sorry reader but i didn't
catch the rest. i have become
a collector of purposeful unknowns.
the cactus are not in a field.
they wither into mint flavored tooth picks.
we have a kitchen the size of the world.
the last knife snaps in half 
& now all we have are our discontents. 

callisto & arca

a son always returns as the hunter.
his golden bow at his side.
moon hanging like a beam of sugar
across the forest's bearded wild. 
woman inside a bear 
inside a prick of light.
the sons we leaven just to see
them harden into caskets of bone.
my days on four pillars. taking 
whatever the trees will tell me.
i miss nothing about womanhood
besides when, on a rare night alone,
i might glimpse myself in a pool.
notice fabric draped across
my body & think, "i am nothing
but a future constellation." 
for most myths we know what is coming.
told our own stories as children.
followed what was promised. 
the gravity of zeus. to think 
i once believed i could escape.
could become a common girl
& have no stories spun around me.
that was arrogant though
because all girls have stories
weaving them. who doesn't want
to be twice-told. yes, it is me.
your mother in the body of a bear.
arca, you haven't grown at all
since you were just a shard of glass
in my chest. now, let me be your father.
i can show you what it means 
to truly capture. come closer,
do you not understand? i am about
to become nothing more 
than a spilled handful of stars.

cycle

as in "life" but not 
two wheel & a basket of plums.
for describing the persistence
of buds growing from my neck.
once, we raised tadpols 
in the bathtub. watched their legs
as they slowly emerged. 
beneath any skin there are 
so many limbs. growing pumpkins 
in the basement without
a speck of light. they turn
ghost & roll up & down stairs.
meaning repeated grief or
revelry. i'm holding a seance
for my sixteen year old self.
there she is with a mouth full
of chicken eggs. air too 
moves in race tracks. coming back
to where you were before. 
a snake loose in the house.
replanting dead shoes & waiting
from a fresh box to emerge.
if only it was true. if only
everything returned pristine
after a certain number 
of pirouttes. i walk a nest of eggs 
around the block three times.
by the third i have an eagle.
then there is the other kinds of return.
how, even after we cleaved apart
i craved the burning corners 
you set for me. bear trap in the kitchen.
suitecase of your favorite knives.
you, showing me each sharpness
before putting them away & asking innocently
"why do you say you're afraid."
we crave the familiar even if it means
again becoming a corn husk doll.
i am more flammable than ever.
in a nest at the back of my closet
i save a bluebird egg. sleeping & safe.
talk to the egg. tell her
"you can keep your bones
all to yourself." shut the door.
take a walk around the block
& search the ground 
for signs of whatever season
will ask next for a set of keys.  

cow-tipping

dreaming the impossible
i always look 
at the spaces between fingers.
consider what i could topple over.
then remember a photograph
of my grandmother. alone in italy
in front of the leaning tower
arms behind her back. we are all hiding
our desire to see animals knocked
off their hooves. i make a fist & practice 
fending off a hoard of crows.
in the field behind my parent's house
cows roamed. discussed armageddon 
& read each other's spots 
like tea leaves. i was fourteen
when i first trekked out there
in the sharpened autumn cold.
felt the harvest earth crunch 
beneath my shoes. cows. wide-eyed.
a flock of mothers. their breath making
brief clouds. most of them, 
already laying down. i kneed. joined them.
wished to sleep amoung their big bones.
closed my eyes to picture cows
tumbling like grocery bags. then,
head over hoof. rolling toward
oblivian. me too, nothing more 
than a stray wheel. i wanted to lead
each of them one by one into my bed room.
turn off the lights 
& feel their comforting weight.
instead i left without a single body
unturned. tripped on a stone
by the edge of the field. 
wiped my blooded hand on my thigh
& scooped myself back into 
the dark of the house. imagined my family 
all as cows. pushing my brother
into my father. cow dominos.
tipping one into the next.