prayer to god for a more dangerous gender

may i wear burning bush dresses.
watch my hair catch. singe past bone.
turn diamond from the heat. hoard pearls
beneath my tongue. a dress is always a portal.
when i was a boy-girl, my sex lived inside
a taser. may my sex dwell only in ocean trenches
where, pryed open by tectonic plates, i sigh volcanic.
may i cut off all my hair
& it grow back indigo. may all my lovers
know my name without me having to speak it.
a name is a kind of dress. may i be, 
as often as possible, a boy in a dress.
at the dawn of gender there was only green.
drying my old hearts in the sun like prunes.
please, i do not want to be valid or true.
i only want icicles dangling from my every move.
thighs made of swimming pools. a biology 
without & tunnels. may women see me & think
"i no longer crave sisterhood." men graze
in the meadows of my shoes. a full-length mirror
to drink from. neighbors pouring salt circles
around their homes. i want an infectious gender.
for everyone on my block to wake up
& crave lavender. mouthfuls of purple.
closing our eyes for a whole day. may i 
only sing siren-voiced. may my songs 
lead ships on dry land. streets flood 
with pleasure. every mailbox is
a sex organ. opening the lid. slipping 
my hand inside. envelops of "yes, more."
may my hands always both ignite 
& cool. may i be as wet as morning grass.
may my gender arrive & depart
like a moth to a light. head blaring 
to meet the false sun. 

 

doll house w/ mice

pretending to be human?
i wonder aloud as we watch mice
make their way to doll house.
they carry pocket watches & stolen sugar.
stand on plastic beds & peer out
windows. the doll house is a bisection.
a dream clock & a soiled planet.
door bell rings again. knock knock.
is it our house or the doll house?
the doll house. one is the mother 
& one is the father & the others decide
to be children. imagine picking 
your family title out of thin air?
they put on clothes. we undress.
mice making plastic dinner. us opening
a can of ravioli. two spoons. 
mice washing their hands & faces.
you combing my hair. knots like
new knuckles. i don't want to miss
a moment of this house. ask the mice
if they want to be big balloons like us.
the top of my head skirting ceiling.
mice playing tiny pianos & inventing manners.
dictionaries in their hears.
dining room table. our mother sleeping
like a den of pillows. the mice mother
laying in the bathtub considering 
graveyards & burials. wooden spoons
for all of us. come on now,
i plead. wouldn't you like 
to eat gold from tupperware?
babies turn to shoes. you leave 
for midnight soccer practice
or basketball court dancing.
i close the doll house. stop watching.
open a window & consider tossing
the doll house out. watch it grow wings.
watch it fly south for the winter.
i don't. instead, i toss out
a dinner plate. hear it shatter 
on the driveway. my father returns
& leaves in the same breath.
the mice discuss the world "generation."
i listen & take notes.

chess

i taught my knights to walk 
from either corner of my face.
once we were the kingdom.
i felt my flesh checker 
as i got older. castles gliding 
razor like across the moore. 
once, i played with death. 
challenged him to a match 
on my tongue. 
he folded his hands in his lap
as i tried to corner his queen.
two of them dance sapphic
in their rows. who hasn't 
been bisected by their own color?
shadow meet daylight. here & then
gone. somedays, just a king remains.
stalks the edge of my bones.
remembers the days
when his round-headed children
marched straight forward 
to their destruction. i am 
a series of children's crusades.
the bishops's sign of the cross
over their foreheads. all the gone pieces
at the bottom of a well
in my sternum. i followed the rules
for how to depart. clean & precise.
this is how the left side of my face
became a shadow too. sitting 
at a halved board. king 
on either side of a table. 
i feel the patterns of my two male 
& two female & two knight. they keep 
me wide awake with their plotting.
i spend a day only killing sideways.
then, follow a holy man to the edge
to make up for what was neccesary.
a girl living under the crown 
like a goat beneath trampoline

quilt

in the garden, you shed patches
like a dogwood tree. i followed you.
i caught every single one:
your paisley laugh, your polkadot mornings,
& your curious pure blue stripes. 
then, alone, i sewed them
in rows of eight. watched the quilt swell 
to the length of my tiny bedroom. 
slept encircled in your acres.
how can we begin to measure land? 
same as we do our bodies.
i take scissors to cut stray thread.
wipe my face off in a fogged mirror.
outside, every single tree is ripe 
with red apples. you are long ago a voicemail.
captured & repeated. clothe torn 
into so many pieces. sometimes i wonder
who, if anyone else, sews together instants.
takes a needle from the desk drawer
& selects the maroon thread?
when i'm wrapped in the quilt 
i almost believe you are alive again.
most day i don't believe in girls at all. 
animated in each seam. you used to 
let your hair down only on the graveyard hill.
pocketed the smoothest rocks. listened
to autumn exhale her orange.
all across the pennsylvania wilderness
leaves are turning into creek water vessels
add another row of squares to the quilt. 
fold so it will fit beneath my bed. 
ambulance sirens spill their pins 
across the floor. more patches descend 
from the ceiling: a snapped twig,
a merri-go-round, & an orchid. 

volume

i found the dial in the basement floor
between boxes of broken christmas ornaments
& my father's rusted screwdrivers.
i had gone down there in search of the ghost
of our old turtle who used to sleep down there
in a swimming pool all winter. he was no where
to be found but i am prone to scouring.
the size of my fist, the dial scream to be whirled.
above, the family was sitting in a portrait
watching the rerun television or in their own 
caverns building minecraft cathedrals. 
i wish i could see a card board box 
of all our secrets. i want knicknacks of what
we're hiding. my heart would be a silver dish.
i got on my hands & knees to twist the dial.
as i did i heard the world get louder & then softer
when i turned it the other way. i hummed aloud
to test my own voice, turning from mother 
to humming bird to lawn mower. my voice 
filled the stone walled basement. too i could hear
upstairs the talkshow voices eating each other
& my brothers thumbs becoming obelisks. i asked myself 
would you live in a louder or a softer world?
immediately, turned to knob down as low as it could go.
reveled in the swelling silence. stomped my feet.
shouted into the basement's cool air. 
the house seemed to pearl away. smooth & opalescent. 
no my corners or doors. my family's necklace clasps
clinking. teeth turned cotton-balls. i don't know 
just how long we stayed like that. volume turned
down to zero. i knew at one point
my bones were round as hula-hoops. then there was
a grasp. fingers to dial. all the angles 
returning. foot steps above. the dial turned 
slightly up. i left it. put a milkcrate 
over top its face. slipped away back upstairs.
still, when i close my eyes, i see its face.
notches all the way around. the quiet
waiting for me like a porceline bowl. 

ice cream cows & hoof eating

when i say i don't want any animal products
i mean i want to burrow deep beneath 
the earth's surface & drink diamonds. 
coax the animal out of the mineral. weren't we all
once an amber-captured DNA staircase? 
cows in the field behind my television 
are aware their bodies are going towards
rainbow-sprinkled delight. they're bitter about it.
sometimes they'll go static in protest.
cows perched in waffle cones. cows laying down
in the grey before the storm. when i look at jello
it seems so harmless. once, i dated a guy
whose eyes wobbled like jello whenever he saw me.
the cows are waiting in line at the ice cream parlor.
when was the last time you tasted your purpose?
if the wordl were to collapse i would not
be the best asset. i am already ready to become
a sacrifice. i see myself under the tab
of a jello cup saying, "these are made
from the hard footsteps of goats." 
a horse once asked me if i knew there is
horse meat in some burgers. i replied
"there is some meat in everything." 
once, i opened a piece of junk mail 
& a cow slipped out. she explained she was
meant for slaughter but wanted something more.
i told her to hide & i made a tiny cow statue of her.
she's still on my desk. morally speaking,
sweet is always better than savory.
a spoon enters the reddest red & comes out
covered in mouth. i sit in a field with the cows.
i go static too & no one finds us.
an ice cream truck circles the block 
long into the night, looking for victims.

raining only dogs

you say "it's only rain"
& ignore the animals falling like luggage.
outside, on the curb, my umbrella is smashed in
by a mastiff. sky murky & urgent grey.
full of sharks. i see their fins. 
when i was a girl water used to fall in sheets. 
filled in driveway divots to make the puddles
i'd swim in. let me show you how 
to breast stroke in only an inch of water.
often i will sit the pitcher under spigot
& leave the water running. pitcher overflows.
this is where we are. in the sink
next to the dishes. trepassers in purple.
car hoods smashed in. it's only rain, i know this.
but, lately, the rain has had skulls & teeth.
has taken to making a swimming pool
of our alley. i see great koi fish 
in the rush. the dogs swim towards the horizon.
none of us are sure to whom they belong.
maybe once i was a dog who rained down
with such desperation. when there is 
nothing else left to do, the body 
finds its water & wields it. once i floated
in the ocean & felt my skin petaling away like oars.
another time, just in the shower, a black rain cloud
slipped out of my ear. thunder shook even my fingernails.
this is what i get for listening to the radio.
bodies battering all the rooves on my street.
the word "damage" means less to me each year. 
barefoot, i got out into the dampness. storm with
a thousand eyes. i take some of the dogs inside.
i feed them. this is ill-advised. reports say 
if you feed a dog, more & more will come.
i stroke their heads & say, "let them come.
it's only rain." 

vigil

i was the first one to reject sleep
in favor of knowing. cut a hole in the middle
of my mattress to remind myself of sink holes 
& impending plummets. it was indigo at first.
then just purple. then pastel. lavendar.
i smelled pine needles & cirtus moons.
my irises turned into melons. i was so so sweet.
delectable. had to resist the urge
to wake all my loved ones up to say
"you are missing so much. the night is full
of diamonds." i harvested parables. 
invented seeds. listened to all my neighbors
as they poured sleep from chimneys & windows.
if you knew where the spiders go at night
you would wear a plastic bag over your head too.
i've learned to breathe this way-- through 
all kinds of membranes: glass & burlap & plastic.
the ghosts these days are metallic anyway.
all the wooden ones degraded & turned to dust.
taken care of by the street cleaner.
from my kitchen i saw a mailbox spit.
witnessed two rabbits trading vehicles.
if no one is watching, nothing is happening.
i don't do this selfishly. this is in case
no one else's eyes are open. we wouldn't want
the world to stop. it will roll up like a rug 
if we aren't careful. you have to scour. 
you have to light candles. when i feel myself getting tired. 
i spin a top in each of my eyes. i tell the night insects
"please talk to me." they tell me pre-human stories
all in sound & color. the vermilion one is my favorite. 
standing out in the street, even the cars are dead.
burrowed next to the ground hogs. a phantom snow
is always waiting for the right season.
i open my palm & catch a baby shoe 
as if fals from a morning cloud. 

bat boxes

i tell you i want to stay the night
& you permit me. fasten a home from
paperclips & an old shoe box.
i use our evening to make a dragon
of your television. have you not noticed
there are arms hidden in every animal?
whale's phantom hand. snake's soldier stance. 
bat's meager palms. i ate gnats from around
your bananas waiting for you to wake. humans are
prone to wasting the best parts of darkness. 
sleeping bags hung from the ceiling
on meat hooks. were you not ravenous?
scraping jewels from the belly of the beast.
you think this is symbiosis. really, 
i am using you for your lamps & 
your canned beans. a bunker emerges 
in the periphery. space enough just for us.
i will tell you stories about gliding
from tree to tree in search 
of a syllable. i will tell you about 
all the lovers who turned into rabbits.
our shadows spend midnight standing up straight.
i wave to mine before he runs away, crumpled
like an old castle. i'm going to 
teach you your upside down. your inverted heart. 
take your shoes off. i'll float them
down river. finger to lips. we have to be
quiet. we have to not wake up the sun.
i used to dance endlessly until my limbs
turned to twigs. i'm going to stay 
as long as you'll have me. now, look,
above. the sky is full of ripe plums. 

tree stump

the labrinth was your body making itself.
most of the time i don't want escape.
i want exoskeleton in the washing machine
& then hours waiting to dry. i walked to school
shipwrecked. hair tangled with hay.
sometimes a head rolls off it's neck. 
sitting on the stump, we talked about 
doing drugs that none of us had. a hawk
nested in the trees above. shouted at us
to get a life. it seemed like everywhere i turned
another torso abandoned its branches.
a boys took their skin down to the butcher
to ask to be processed. we knit a quilt
for everyone who left. i sympathize though. 
sometimes the whole thing is rotted 
& all you can do is hope a seed took root. 
one day i went out to where the forest
used to tell me "take off your shoes."
i found only stumps. i stepped on them
like garden stones. i asked, "where did you go?"
the trees, of course, had been turned 
into stepping stools. after all, the world is
always just out of reach. sometimes i'll open 
the medicine cabinet & find a forest staring at me.
i'll explain, "you should be out of here."
forest doesn't listen of course. i cry
& thank the foliage & the doe & even
the ground bees hungry for ankles. 
in the dark of my bedroom i put 
my hand to my face. feel the splinter.
headbands of years. one after another.
i used to be a rolled tongue 
in the onion grass. forest brims 
underneath the covers. says, 
"it's time to worry."