remnant maker

they would leave body bags 
of shredded paper 
outside the office building. 
buldging with slivered words,
i burrowed inside & slept
in the fragment & ribbon. felt 
my tongue tatter too-- become
strips of past necessity. 
a dead credit card humming,
swarming my ears. i wanted to buy
some nonesense like a kiddie pool
for my kitchen or a play-food set
to pretend eat when guests come over.
let words cuff me. 
trance of treasure
& old gold-watched men. a cane
brimmed from the  
plastic lining. all the secrets 
lived there like wasps.
if you don't bother a secret
it won't bother you. naively, i let them
envelope me. wondered who will
do the dismantling of my life
when i am no longer there
to lock the front door & 
junk the junk mail. a little boy
standing resolute above a shredder
& a father telling him
"careful, 
don't get your fingers caught."
i snagged my finger on 
a ripe strand of promise
in the pile. every once in awhile
you find a legal paragraph
so sentimental it deserves to be prayer.
a will wrote itself 
in the basement with only 
a candle & a can opener. 
i always emerged terrified
& papercut. knowing too much
is irresisteble & then irrevocable.
secretly took a few pieces home
to try & sew them back together
on the kitchen table
by the light of the only firefly 
left in the city. i was a good 
investigator of dead trees 
& octopus ink. never did 
get enough pieces to make 
a document. tell me, what evidence
is your favorite? i like 
a driver's license or hand print.
i dusted for more hand prints 
in my apartment & found i was
truly alone. both comforting 
& hollowing. didn't return 
the splinters. i still read
them aloud to myself when i'm searching
for what to say to all the window's
dying insects. we're all just
one good remnant away 
from poof! & gone.

piercings 

the moon got a nose ring.
i bought a pair of earrings 
for my favorite cardinal & she went
to the prom alone. a bear stole
my studs & checked her reflection
in the shifting river. 
whole streches of wide open skin. 
we should
go hiking with our mouths open 
to catch butterflies. where & how
will you place the door?
i told you to stick your finger
in the wound on my side 
& it came away with glitter.
we laughed. simon put his hair
in a man-bun before 
carrying the cross 
down to the bridge. i'm not saying 
we need a jewel or even a jukebox.
i'm just saying some music 
would be nice to pierce with.
paper towels 
& a sewing needle slipped through skin. 
ice cubes.
red november. nice & even.
one on each side. how do you make do?
i inspect my profile. cut silhouette 
froma scrap cloth. pin to the door
in case of intruders. 
breaking skin
like a soda tab. i was so shaken
& shimmering. who knows what i was 
supposed to do with my hands
so i put them on your waist like
a high school slow dance. 
there aren't enough 
disco lights. there aren't enough 
bed room floors. i wanted to dangle
from your ear lobe. hang glider.
honey spoon. halo. finding holy
at the end of a pester. drill
to puncture tooth. i've got you
by a short string & i don't know
where we're going. let's leap  
face-first into the needle-stack
in search of clasps. you don't need
to worry about stigmata. 
there's already one.
there can only be one. 

strawberry tree

in october i ate handfuls of leaves
to get my reccomended dose of orange.
wall-papered my bathtub with paisley moons.
the strawberries i found hovering
just above the ground & tasted 
like ghosts of themselves. with a tweezers
i removed their freckle seeds
& planted them between the floorboards.
briefly a vampire, i drank the blood
of willing animals: a neighbor 
in his fishing hat & a tired dog 
who just wanted to sleep. waited for
the seeds to flourish. i heard them hum
all night long like little bells.
the year's end was looking more 
& more red by the day. i could see it
from the window at the end of the street
where no one lived. just a blare
of real righteous red. i could have
gone to church once or twice but
by the time i thought of it
my soul was already occupied 
with knitting egg-cozies. the leaves
browned & wept. finally, one day,
i woke up to a strawberry tree
complete with feathered tongue. 
it tinkled with its metal arms & 
the fruit crawled down from its branches
on hands & knees. plump little strawberries 
wrong in their season. i told them 
they could be my wonderful secret
but we had to hush because there were
angels on patrol. angels enforce 
what can grow in what season & 
if they heard my strawberries 
i'd be forced to give them up. 
we danced like girls & i swallowed 
until my whole face was pink-red.
balancing your color wheel in the cold months
is nearly impossible, so why try?
everything worthwhile is red.
red lips. red blood. red berries
humming contently. swarm of my heart.
in the morning the berry tree
wilted & died. i burried its bones
in the yard. october swept 
the porch with her hair,
taking the strawberry leaves 
& a few of my fallen freckles.
nothing could have prepared me 
for winter. 

needle nose plyers 

the alligator sold his head for scrap
& bought a burrow with the fool's gold. 
i find the tool like crossed legs 
down where the dirt's gone concrete.
everything needs to be removed eventually 
& you show me a bullet
lodged in your knee from a kid's war 
in the far haystacks. i am the artist 
of extraction & from all around 
animals & plants & humans arrive 
asking for assistance. 
i stand over rows of tilled earth
& help the farmer pluck out the teeth
he planted years ago. some have grown
the size of fingers. another day
i pull pins from an old woman's arm
while she tells me she wants to sew
a quilt big enough to cover her whole house: 
each patch a new color.
it is comforting to always be removing--
i can forget there are decisions
& focus on the unwinding. what do you
want to take back? i can help you.
once, i even removed a year, thrashing
& angry, from the jaws of a young girl.
she wept & thanked me & then she turned 
a year younger. for practice, 
i used to ressurect song birds
but they told me they didn't want 
to come alive again. i could never understand.
now, when they pass by they all silent glare.
they value complete cycles. they burry 
their dead in the clouds but still
sometimes one will plummet & i'll be
gripping my plyers, trying to resist
the tug i could give them--feathers alive again.
truly though, what creature doesn't need
a good lightswitch. i only did myself once.
there was the handprint you left
on my back. open wide. all five fingers.
i could feel it day & night.
it was hard to reach around 
but i snagged the corner. your hand turned
into a song bird & promptly died. 
sort of kind of free, i took the corpse
to the backyard to let the flock handle it.
is it wrong to regret your regret?
if i had left it there maybe
i could still feel that fragment of you--
your hold hand open & chirping 
against my bare skin. i meet the alligator 
in a dream to ask him
"do you miss your face?" but 
he has no mouth to answer with.
i move the plyers open close 
to hear what's left of his voice.
he says, "i miss everything."
i don't give him his skull back. i run 
from the hole in the earth
back into my bedroom. keep the plyers close.
more uprooting tomorrow. 

any address

one by one they slip themselves
into the mail slot. go thin 
in the canteloupe grin moon.
addresses carved in their shoulders.
my neighbors are hastening people.
they think of the next town
& the next. they put bobbins & 
wrapped hard candies in their mouths
to deliver upon arrival. i watch
with my dusty binoculars 
& consider joining them. i've never been
skilled at catching a gust
& riding it up to a new driveway.
i have the addresses of dead boys 
so i fold them & bake them into pies.
all distances are edible with
the right attitude though some
are more bitter than others.
the mail box is so full so i don't
try to add myself tonight. i imagine
telling a passerby "could you 
write an address on my spine? 
any address it doesn't matter."
i want to be plucked by my bones
& told on what dirt to spend my gravity. 
their bodies are going everywhere.
i read a "seattle" & a "boise"
& even a "canada." a siren machine 
yanks everyone's ghost
from their light-sleeping. 
alone, i walk down there
to the night post office just
to trace the slot. i peer inside
& there are all the travelers
dancing & holding hands in a little
may pole circle. they look up 
at my & tell me "get in or go."
i go. i'm too affraid. not yet.
the slot was so cold & thin.
my body balloons like a love confession.
no where to keep it brilliant.
i need company or a biplane. 
all those joy bodies
knocking close together 
in the mail box's blue glow.
how could they forget all their mails
& just skin live like that.
back home the binoculars 
even shut their eyes. i start
another list on my wall
of places i would like to die.
i don't get very far:
the woods in alaska, inside a manhole,
& by a dangling basement bulb.
more tomorrow. more tomorrow.
for now just ceiling standing 
until i'm too tired even for that.
cut a slot in the wall
to practice the necessary folding.
i never fit. not quite. 

road 

i asked where they were taking the street.
first with shovels & then the big monster machines.
entities in orange suites 
& goggles gobbling their eyes. 
the coordinated animals came to work early, 
grinding at the ground. hunks of stone & asphalt.
underneath, nothing but air. that's all
we'd been standing on these years.
i worried about the apartment building
& if one day while they worked it would 
give out from all the absence, drop 
like an orange from the neck. google told me
not to worry about that because all houses 
are necklaced up to the sky. the streets
had become obsolete. travel is a thing 
only birds really needed to do. we had
ground & gateways & what more did we 
really need. all the while i wished
i had chosen someone to dangle there with.
someone to ask, "have you seen 
the air today?" it only took about a month
to completely remove. for the first few days
naively i told myself maybe they are 
builing a new one. then nothing. 
then the quiet window & whoosh of rain
tumbling right through the groundless planet.  
i try to remember the road so i don't forget
what it felt like beneath my knees.
sometimes i walk the wooden hallway
with my eyes closed & pretend i am 
crossing a street. car horn. crossing walk.
who knows what it is we did wrong.
maybe it was just time for distance 
to buckle beneath the weight. i wish 
i could see where they took the road 
to dispose of it. what kind of cradle
or dump or disaster. all the streets 
& avenues & boulevards is one big farwell tumble. 
my biggest secret is i stole a fragment.
just one corner form my favorite sidewalk square.
it mosquito buzzes in the closet 
so i have to come & tell it to hush.
i stare at my shard on my most celophane nights 
& say one day you'll carry me elsewhere.
wind swings the houses all in a row
& sometimes at dusk i try to look up
from the upon window to glimpse 
the tether. what is keeping us
from going easy as the rain? i let 
my cell phone ring. a bird pecks
at the back door. moss grows
on the shower's tile walls. i dream 
a street building lover who has 
just enough pieces to reach me. 

plastic pumpkin head

full of tragic afterstories
& a wind-up moon. carried by
the neighbor man who loves me
like an almost son. i swing 
as jupiter on his old neck.
taste the ripe finger dew
from treaters open palms.
find a good light for me:
i want a flash or a bulb 
or a minor filament to floss with.
in the village, there are 
not enough vessels to go around.
resort to skulls for drinking 
& femurs for spoon. ask midnight 
who she is tilling tonight.
burial for my non-biodegradable self.
trying to teach grass to eat 
bubblewrap & saying, "come on please
the future of the atmosphere
depends on this." we don't all
work well under pressure. i do though.
i rise to the occasion & carry
wedding rings & crossword puzzles
door to door. i sell my face 
for grin. teeth & all. wipe
the licorice root clear from
where we meant to be children.
none left though, just adult men 
with their feet bursting through 
old canvas shoes. 
play ball with an iris. i can see
everything in the raw texture.
a drop in the bucket. a drop
in the bucket. holding rocks,
i always almost burst but 
i grit my lips. turn me 
upside down when 
there's no one else looking
so i can get empty. until then
not much can be done 
about the straining. the thing
about plastic-break is it's final.
the recycling bin is for beautifuls.
i am not & was never
a beautiful but i am a useful 
which is more pronounced 
& more handled. bring me to 
a good boy's door. i could cradle
car keys or even a spool of yarn.
to be a holder is to be 
a seer. everything fruition
passes through our grasp.
i'll pass you the scissors
& you can cut the balloon free
to become the latest planet 
too far away to name. 

one metal shovel

we scoop snow like dirt 
until the snow is the soil 
& everything grows ice-clear
past spring. the second ice age 
was not predicted by anyone
but my father who has always 
stock piled aprehensions. 
we have a closet just for fear:
dark & musty & take turns 
peering inside, then, out of respect,
we tell no one what we saw. dad witnessed
carrots, like fangs, yanked 
from the white earth. 
the next day he bought 
a sturdy metal shovel & propped it
by the front door like a new wife.
we knew it was really a new eon
when it snowed on into june.
now, in august, accostumed 
to eating ice for every meal,
we use the shovel to reach 
the old asphalt road 
that used to carry us elsewhere.
edges swarm with blizzard 
& must we. sometimes, when dad
isn't guarding the shovel,
i will cradle her down to 
what used to be the back yard 
& i'll dig like mad, as if i might
hit stone or dirt. the shovel 
clinks like a steel dress & 
all i'm left with are piles 
& piles of snow & a large 
heart-sized hole where the planet
should be. cruel shovel, letting me 
labor all afternoon to reveal nothing. 
i tell the shovel my secrets
like sometimes i'm thankful 
we work only to survive & sometimes 
i want to eat sweet & heavy 
squash or syrup. i bite 
my hand for the texture. the fear closet
gets more use than it should. 
my brother is probably there now
staring & staring. me, i'm going 
to learn how to grow peas or tomatoes
in the chill. we're al waiting 
from the mammoths to return.
when it happens we have the shovel
to protect us. dad has faith 
in the sharp edges of her face.
until then, i fill the holes
but not before peering down into them,
pretending i could, childlike,
tunnel a hole through the earth 
& emerge on a green otherside. 

happy [         ]

we hired a live-in clown for the weekend.
arguing, we couldn't decide if it was
my birthday or yours so we both put on
the folded paper crowns & both 
threw our watches down the well. 
told the clown to stand in the hallway 
& keep look out for spiders. he did.
he was skilled & caught four 
by the first hour. you kept saying
"we should celebrate" "we should
celebrate" & i said, "look we are"
with my crown on & my bare feet
& my mouthful, eating sugar from the bag
with my favorite soup spoon.
i am terrible at these kinds of things,
always finding it good enough to be alive 
& have something sweet to suck on. 
i didn't know enough to realize
you wanted guests. wanted to invite
the sidewalk's benign ghosts 
& one or two bears & maybe even 
a singer. i could have sung to you.
i thought a clown should be
enough for anyone. he sat with us
while we ate but wouldn't swallow a morsel
despite our encouraging. 
he said, "clowns don't eat. it's not
very funny." instead he poured water
over his face & cackled &
slapped his hands. we asked if
he was from around here & he just shrugged.
you told him to leave early
but he held his fingers up "2"
& said, "you said two days." yes, 
yes we did. so, the clown laid 
taking up the whole sofa
while me & you tried to be festive.
blew up one blue balloon each 
& held them like swollen lollipops.
when yours burst, a beetle 
flew out & we covered our faces.
when the clown finally left 
we couldn't imagine 
the apartment without him. i begged
& you wept & the clown crawled away
on all fours towards whatever
vehicle clowns travel with these days.
our ages flickered like neon signs
above our heads & you admitted 
you never wanted to get older,
that you'd only done so 
to make me happy. 
i had done the same & so we 
fished our watches from the well
& tried all night to make
the other one laugh. no luck.
spiders returned wearing 
clown shoes. 
we couldn't sleep at all. 

my father builds an aquarium in the basement

fills it first with sharks
& then with water. carries the water
down from the kitchen sink
in his cupped palms while the fish
gasp & wriggle like door knobs.
i watch tv & dad passes back & forth
in from of me while the show giggles
& flashes color. 
my brain turns off easily anymore.
lets in whatever mouth wants
to take over. tv show about 
who knows but at least it has 
texture. everything in the house
is dull: knives, lightbulbs, even
sharks teeth. dad tells the sharks 
to be patient while he fills their home.
the sharks are smooth & 
when he's gone i hear them whisper
about escaping in the nearby stream.
i used to fear sharks
in all bodies of water before
i realized they're all trying
to escape their fathers 
just like me. i ask dad 
if he needs any help & he assures me
he has this covered. next, 
he lugs a huge bag of colorful 
little aquarium pebbles. i know
the sharks will not be pleased.
they are actually hungry
& don't want to be babied. they are
adult sharks & they prefer grey everything.
mostly, dad's projects are
his children. the habitat almost complete,
he sets up a folding chair
to stare at the sharks who cower
in the far dim corner of the aquarium. 
dad tells them they are cool 
& sips a beer for his newest creation. 
i glimpse this from the wooden basement stairs.
when dad falls asleep, i'll help
the sharks slip out the back door
& into the grass yard. blinkless animals,
i see my own basements in their faces,
pale with worry & sickly love.
they don't want to leave my father
when i come to collect them.
i knew this would happen & it's true
the aquarium is magnificent. giant walls
of glass. even a little fake sunken ship
for the sharps to play in. 
but none of that is why they want to stay.
they yearn for a basement. i tell them
the world is full of basements
but they slip away & i return
to the tv which has always known
how to cradle my worries 
until they're nothing but 
blurred & blue voice
beneath feet of water.