earbud 

in march we looked for tadpoles.
found them wriggling like commas in the muck.
each a little inhale. i want a pause
not a body. green algae. a plastic bucket.
my father & i with the satellites on our backs.
carried them back home away from the pond.
outside our house we picked out our favorites 
& slipped them into our ears to hear them
tell us stories of their past lives.
one sang like a trumpet. another called
long & lonely egret notes. i laid on my back
as the tadpoles worked, sewing a seam 
between our bodies & theirs. earbuds pulling us
into & through old lives. one tadpole,
a shoe maker, asked me if i knew his daughter.
i lied & said we went to school together.
this helped him rest. i am still unsure 
if a lie can sometimes be useful if it helps
another creature rest. i hope the tadpole
never finds out the truth. 
they are all frogs now though.
by the time they are frogs the tadpoles 
forget all the oldness. speaks only of 
fear & hunger & out of the blue
occasionally, they will return to sit on our porch.
short shadows in the lamp light 
on a humid evening in july. i go sit with them.
i tell them. "we spoke when you were tadpoles."
they blink, unknowing. i used to think 
getting older was a deepening. a process
of wading further & further into a pond.
with the frogs here i know i am getting farther
from my oldest mouth. finally, the frogs depart.
back towards a verdant sleep. then, me too,
with my ears empty, crawling into 
a soft cluster of my own making. 

celestial noise

i asked you, "can you hear that?"
we were sitting on the highest branches
of the old playground oak tree 
taking spoonfuls of night. i fed you
& darkness dripped from the corner of your mouth
down your neck. all the stars were old tamborines
& we had no where at all to go. the sound
was like a stampede of aluminum foil
or the opening of the oldest jaw. 
then, almost like placing a fresh ear
to the lips of a conch shell. 
we were no longer lovers but friends
who could recount the stories of each other's skin.
you with the constellation freckles. me with
the scar from a thorn in my side.
the last firefly of the year held on
speaking her light in the hopes of getting a response.
all the cars on the road drove towards
supermarkets or gas stations. we closed our eyes
to hear the sound more clearly. "yes, i hear it,"
you said with eyes closed. the language 
of the stars & the planets vibrated our bones.
i remembered the first time we kissed
like toads in the damp woods. two boys 
with our ankles made of brush. his messy
brown hair. finger in a belt loop.
sitting on a rotting log. squishing black beetles
that ran scared from us. i believed 
we were giant. then, here, taking a handful of sound
& pocketing it. texture of sand. already seeping out.
i didn't want it to be over. i wanted to ask
can we stay this old? can we keep the sound
underneath out tongues? our shoulders touched.
the universe swelled like the truth of balloons.
hummed & hummed. turned our teeth purple
with her singing. shed a star or two 
which fell as piles of light. cast long shadows
of our forms. two boys in the dark. 

t-rex dentures 

my mouth fossilized & became scavenger.
tore of pieces of carrion. talked only
to vulutres. circled above & spat
black feathers into the pillow. an intertube
to keep us afloat. downpour but not forecasted.
a hand open to catch the wind. my teeth
formed a chorus. held their hymnals
& asked if we were ever going to own a fence.
sleeping in the footprints of strangers,
i often ask, "what did you once want to be?"
a boy replied once, "i wanted to be a dog."
another, still naked, said, "a tree."
i said, "for me i wanted to be a dinosaur."
buying lizards & asking them to show me 
how to excavate my dna for prehistory.
teeth growing ripe on trees. paleontologists
in my medicine cabinet, sneaking out at night
to gaze down my throat. whenever i lose 
i replace the empty space with a t-rex tooth.
stuffed in the corners of my heart. an elbow.
a memory. a new jaw waits for me.
he knocks on my door a half hour after he left
& he asks, "are you still there?"
i slip into the closet where ferns grow wild.
not a boy anymore. all reptile & carnivore.
"hello?" he asks again. i taste the air.
eventually he departs & when i return
there is no bedroom, just a field of televisions.
shows we once watched. one night can be a whole species.
my skeleton splayed out. a paleontologist bent over
& saying, "i hope you don't mind but i need
to take a picture." 

upon learning mantis shrimp don't really see 12 new colors humans don't

i want to know who, if not the mantis shrimp,
is blinking the thoughts of ancient fruit.
skimming the wild ocean for a color on 
the other side of blue. once, when i was sick
& living in the shadows of twigs, i witnessed
a color that moved like fangs. cut my hair for me.
swept the carpet & then spoke the language
of alarm clocks. you're telling me you've never 
conversed with yellow? asked for her secret
double face? the mantis shrimp is no stranger 
to red. puts on her cloak before hunting.
our conversations have gone on for centuries.
a human will kneel & ask the mantis shrimp
if it was god who made all the colors.
she will shake her head but refuse 
to admit who. she knows the color maker personally
& will only tell the secret to her children
in the shadow of a passing boat.
once a rainbow spread across my bedroom
like an organ. i keep blue closest to my heart.
let it warble. all the birds in a single hue.
i am trying to find that old color again.
the one who visited me not like an angel
but like a ghoul. a color has dreams & nightmares.
a color remembers when it was used for blood
& used for a mouth & used to force flowers to inhale.
i used to be so blurred my blood came out indigo.
told no one how off i was. waited for 
the wheel to turn. the mantis shrimp watched.
snipped pieces of light to savor. to keep the library.
little bright shelves. impossible word un-worded.
what can i tell you? i saw color yet to be named. 
the mantis shrimp come like priestesses.
tell us not to worry. ask again. ask again. 

piano wire

self-taught, i wrapped the certain thinness
around each of my fingers. tethered them
to cement trees. pretended to walk the dog.
the dog was a compost pile. the dog was electric
& out of batteries. piano knocked on our door
one afternoon escaped from a junk cathedral.
haunted with fingers it needed to be taken apart.
my father worked while i watched. the plyers had long
become moths so he used a knife & fork.
snipped each note from the creature's chest
until we werre no longer in danger of hearing a song.
i stole the wires though when he was gone.
drug them to the behind yard where feral cats
had made a graveyard. there i took to binding.
rock to arm. leg to leg. we could be
so close. a knot. i wanted to be tied to you.
to another someone. feel them breathe & bend.
wires left red halos across my skin. 
i am holier than the horizon line & maybe even
more godly than gold. i glint like CDs in sunlight.
take the wire & stitch clouds together.
suture wounds in the ground where hell peers through.
i'm not afraid of death. a ghost once told me
"it's less of a bang & more of a dwindling."
i always feel that happening so maybe it is
all the same sensation. i think of 
helixes & galaxies then i imagine wiring
a few together. a garden of staircases.
another piano gallops on its way to the ocean.
it will probably not reach the ocean.
i open my box of wire. draw out a single thread
& step out into the morning eager to find
a loosened face or a nestling to link back to nest. 
the dog is still unusable. i nudge him
with my shoe & go on my way. 

mother camera

i want to be surveilled.
sometimes i look into eyes & notice
a red ring which means that person is a robot.
i do not run but instead picture the video
they're getting of me walking to my car.
my apartment building has a camera in the front
& one in the back. i am a particle.
i am a gift-wrapped army man. 
tell my favorite color. tell me what it is
i'm culling the sand for. i bought
a metal detector to look for ancient coins
& square-head nails. the whole world is held together
by a few firm whacks. one big bridge.
but also a gravity graveyard. we put so much trust
in everything to keep moving down. 
i wave at the camera & ask if she's proud of me.
she does not respond. i put her birthday in my phone.
an alarm so i remember to thank her.
what kinds of gifts to cameras like?
a nest made of wires? footage of me 
praying to the old wooden gods? i will confess
to anything these days. i have nothing left to hide 
other than that sometimes hate both the words
"survivor" & "victim" but i want to be both.
i take comfort in the knowledge this will 
be easy for you. cradling warm images of me
until there's no me to watch. let's go 
down to the stream. i'll go barefoot.
even my feet have faultlines. i could have been
a good movie some years back but not so much now.
now i am a dreadfully reliable life. i ask her if 
she wants to see my finger prints.
they have gotten so much louder this past year or so.
she says, "no i already know them."
i nod, feeling silly. like i don't have
anything left to offer. instead, i let her watch me dance.
by the time i'm done i almost forget she's there. 
panting. red hula hoop. cameras in my eyes. 
i'm getting everything. it's comming as ribbon. 

clockmaker 

with a pocket knife he slices off
just one minute each year. glinting & small.
soft as a peach's face & sun-staring bright.
slips them into his knotted socks 
in the bottom drawer 
where no one will open them, 
releasing their quickness.
he knows both of time's rapidity
& its wideness. when he was a child
often he would linger in the shadow 
of his father's golden pocket watch
perched like a canary in a glass case.
between the twitches of the hands he'd house
fantasies & wave break & fairy homes.
so much could transpire in a measurement.
fingers dusted gold. secretly, he made watches
with extra hours for the most kind patrons.
then, for others, he folded time in half.
in the end, he knew it wasn't right.
mashing pace like this. the clockmaker
was supposed to create order. measure every skeleton
in the same container. i couldn't bear it though.
time was elastic. jumped from his hands
like tadpoles. ached as lichens.
as he slept, he could feel time ebb & flow
around him. opened his eye just a peep
to catch a second. glossy & gnat-sized
as it tried to skirt past. held the second tight
before stowing it in the drawer with the rest
of his savings. soon, he would cash it in.
soon he would make his own day. loud & thick.
alone in a world of only past.
until then, he wound his heart each morning.
the sun ate handfuls of sidewalk.
kept the drawer a secret. set out with his work. 

zipper

i want to be undone one tooth at a time.
there were pterodactyls in the yard
so we yelled & made ourselves as large as we could
to scare them off. sitting face to face
on the train ride home from the city
i nest my feet between yours. out the window
the world is jurassic & then modern & then
a valley of ashes. as a boy-girl i would bike
to the fabric store between corn fields.
select patterns from huge reams. marvel at 
pricey velvety blue & greens then find
the wall of zippers. a museum of sideways grins.
bought several & considered administering them
to my body. how easy it would be to open my arm.
thigh. chest. coming apart like skeletons 
departing from a train. the station scattering
in all directions. car headlights. holding my hand
& then me letting go. i keep getting older
but it still feels strange to see your knuckles
inside mine. a bear trap set for cretaceous.
there are really not enough animals to go around.
i find my DNA in the microscope. see the zipper
that asked god to print me. slowly, i undo it.
feel my self unfettering. single hairs floating away.
skin flourishing like silk curtains. i didn't know
what i needed until it was an implement. mouth open.
grasped inbetween my thumb & forefinger.
pulling open. exhale. history in evergreen shade.
a handful of tongues. fossilized footprint.
you walk away & take all your animal cells with you.
my bottom jaw, now a butterfly wind. beats & beats 
until the memory is gone. 

dead baby birds

once i too died young.
willow brushing hair. the nest
knit of tinsel & gnarled branch.
a laptop cord wrapped around my ankle.
kept my feathers in a ziploc bag.
shed them carefully one by one.
i find the body on the stoop 
of the abandoned row house 
beside my apartment. sprawled 
like dinosaur remains. skull emptying.
bees hover above like angles.
i'd like to know the truth 
about where their spirits go. 
are they as fragile as their bones. 
type-face into the cement. or, are they hefty?
laden to the ground. a chorus of little graves.
every other bird chirp you hear 
is a ghost. every other feather you find is 
one of your own. i would fly over the town
& note the best places to disappear:
graveyard hill. diner parking lot.
a queer little swallow. yellow to my soul.
or was i the april-ed blue bird?
an agent of melancholy music. tell me 
how do you give an honorable burial
to such a small creature? i bring him
white sidewalk flowers. the flies growl
as i work. knit a ring around him.
tell him i know what it feels like.
maybe that is a lie. it has been years
since i went. the sun hums around us.
promises to shave away what remains.
at home, i find a feather 
when i sweep the kitchen. cup it in my palm
& let it free out the back door. 

infinite weekend

my dad says, "no one wants to work anymore."
he's angry at the factory. his face callouses over.
i knit a scarf from threads of ivy.
sleep fifteen minutes later than i wanted
& feel guilty for making the morning so green.
walk barefoot to a sister galaxy 
to ask the animals how they earn their bodies.
on one star animals sleep until they're struck
with inspiration. then, manically, they create 
until they are dust. on another they stroke plants
like pet dogs. kiss until night comes & then
in the dark kissing means something more perminant.
i tell you i want an infinite weekend 
by which i mean i think, if i close my eyes hard enough,
we could be monsters. could wander away from town
& sleep inside firefly ridden barns. 
make a fire & ask it questions. become experts
at divination. what will come next is already
in our blood. i had a dream last night i was shopping
for a temple. i wanted something made 
of moonstone or glass. it arrived in a box
as big as any year. we unpacked it together
& took turns running a finger along the surface.
a help wanted sign asks if i am happy. i tell the sign
no one is happy because happy is like a needed 
gust of air not a pair of socks. 
hurricane came & left. handfuls of leaves.
fallen branch. the trees taking their vacations
& leaving nothing. not a root not a stump.
come back, i say, we need your bones. 
i see the infinite weekend. the one i was talking about.
a door within a door within a door. 
we float on egg whites. we eat with our hands.
the sky is pink & sweet.