in the hospital for sick moons

the hallways are paved with ripe rust.
take off your shoes & socks off at the entrance.
you need to remember every texture. 
drink water from a hole in the wall. 
i used to bring my moon flowers, years ago
when i thought she would improve.
took the elevator up to the building 
& tapped on the window to be let inside.
brought her dead daylilies & then
a potted violet. she slept & slept 
still as a stone. i still visit now 
just empty handed. make fists sometimes
& once i brought a crystal to leave 
by her nightstand. the moon doctors wear
ice out of respect for space temperatures.
their faces blurr beneath the surface
& their voices sound like trying to speak 
with a wall between you. it is lonely
loving a sick moon. coming to see her
perched in her bed like a beach ball.
i remind her when she used to loom
in the night sky round & full.
how, for all my life, i would look up 
at her glow & coiled around a sliver
of future. no one knows why moons
fall ill. there are theories but no evidence.
they do tests on the moon. removed
a fragment of her rock & stare at it.
when the test yields nothing
they give me the piece of her &
i pocket it. feel its weight all day
as the healthy sun blathers on 
about fatherhood. i do not know
if the moon will ever be well again.
her slumber only seem to deepen.
where did we go wrong moon? i never seen
a moon leave the hospital. just new ones
arriving from all across the galaxy:
small & ominous & blue & red moons.
the ocean weeps itself higher. the sea level
touches my ankles.
poets take to writing about the clouds 
where she used to dangle. 
on the elevator down i think about
how i would switch places with her
if i could. let her have skin & a body
& let me lay still while doctors tended 
to my surface. does she see us working?
does she look up 
at faces behind ice & remember 
how she used to swell? i tell her 
each time how much she is missed.
i say "get better soon."

transit 

the monarch butterfly thinks nothing of trains.
mistakes the rails for stiches 
where god kneeled down to mend
the severed earth. tastes oil in the air
& thinks "history." plans to spend
the day flitting between this side 
& the other. thinks nothing about 
barcodes or brains. elects to taste 
her legs for hints of the wilted rose bush 
growing outside the lawyer's office.
when lovers shout out windows 
the butterfly always thinks they're
shouting at her. someone says
"please call me back" & she blinks 
like a turned page. when she was new
& her wings still wet with opening,
she imagined landing on a human's face
to understand the texture of skin.
after attempting this twice she's mostly given up.
she knows she would have to land
in their sleep & it is so hard
to catch a human sleeping. her eyes 
are fruit bowls. she thinks nothing
about potting plants or wrists.
has never seen herself in a mirror.
doesn't think anything about trains
though she's narrowly missed being struck 
by the 6:03 PM train to huntington 
fives times. regards the trains rushing
as an act of the landscape 
the same way a hurricane might 
pull the trees sideways. she believes
the structure will one day catch her
& she will have no way to stop it.
pulses her paper-light wings.
hears pollen singing yellow & a radio
praying to anyone who will listen.
flies just above the ground
& unknowingly moves out of the way just as 
the train slices past full of human bodies
each with a face 
& some with their own paper.
she watches them leave, scurrying 
towards cars & buildings. the machine
dull from travel, knows nothing
of the monarch butterfly 
& i am there standing there by the tracks
watching the little creature flit 
like nothing is wrong. i want to tell her
she can land on me & i will never 
rush past. i'll stand still 
as long as she wants. 

scales or
at giant supermarket on a sunday

in the self check out line
i tell the machine everything
is a banana because they're cheap
& i'm running out of excuses
for stock piling security.
i picture a whole pile of bananas
overflowing the little scale.
lately my heart is a parking lot
plastic bag. whisper to me 
& i'll rush away as if i'm full
of apples. i come to the grocery store
like a church. pluck communion
from cold beds. light candles
with twist ties. where do you go
to place your weekly un-truths?
the self check out machine
knows me by name & sits with 
his arms crossed scolding me
for buying more cereal & more bananas
than i can handle. his digital mouth
says i'm a never going to be
a mother (with just his neon number).
not that i want to be. if i could
be anything i'd want to be 
a scale. i'd want people to have confidence
in my account of their wholeness.
i don't mean like a number scale
i mean a tipping scale like the kind
the justice tarot uses to measure
right & wrong. stealing is wrong 
but what if i think everything i eat
really is a banana? it kind of is.
i'm not stealing anyway, i'm just
adjusting the meaning of my food.
i'm just placing the supermarket
on a scale next to any other 
wandering location. in the parking lot
the store's blaring sign will ask me,
in a too-loud voice: HOW ARE YOU?
& i'll lie like you have to 
at that volume saying: i'm alright.
where alright means: likely 
less human every day or 
i am dreaming a great giant scale
to place both of my hands on 
& see which one is heavier.
in the back seat my food really does
turn into bananas. a whole little
jungle of them. rustling leaves.
i am not the extraction or the extractor
just a funnel for flesh. a box 
of crackers rattles where 
dusk should be & in the kitchen 
i stand like a shopping cart 
trying to decide which banana
to eat first. 
 

overgrown

the mirror is full of weeds
they lattice my double-face
like a wall. i don't have enough 
poison to free my flipside.
once we lived in a twin house
& the duplicate sofa slumped
into the fresh dirt. swam with raccoons 
& red wandering. the old men 
versions of ourselves used the oven
to store newspapers. they walked 
the halls holding hands for fear
of getting lost. your shadow self
is feeling left out. you should 
be more open to collaboration
with windows. i open mine
& see a necklace of reflections.
house after house. there was a model
god used to make us. filled each 
with spit & dust. i'm one cough away
from just being a cloud. even the clouds
have binaries. the twin house died 
& the old men selves laid 
face up in the grass. moss grew
over their bodies until they turned
to stone. the stones dispersed 
over the length of my life
& i find them all the time:
a knuckle, a wrist, a chin. 
our real house flourish in the wake.
we cut down the tree in the yard
but its shadow remained painted
in the grass. you can't 
deconstruct the twofold of every body.
sometimes i take my girlhood for
a walk. she is a goose & wants
to migrate with the rest of them
but i need her right where i can see her. 
we're all in the process of swallowing
the other side. all universes 
are just looking for the right one.
which version is going to be
the pleasure one? the mirror 
is so dense there's no such thing 
as checking my face. i touch
my forehead & see the leaves rustle.
there has to be a knife that could fix this
but then again isn't great 
to be the only one in a series?
i take to trusting the blurry form
seen in sidewalk ice. i could be
invisible. i could be a whole house.
i might even be the old stone man--
moss on my teeth. moss on my arms.
check my hands for signs 
of dilapidation. not yet. just
fogged flesh & a backyard ripe
with budding pairs of wrists.
take the doorknob from under 
my pillow & pocket it just in case. 

when road

for a house without remembering
i paid all my citrus
in the heart of squeezed winter.
all the gulls were frozen 
like paper clips & we were just children 
in our bed eating. folded covers 
dipped in the mouse sauce. 
whose brother were we fucking?
undressed him parallel. parked
a car in the old part of town 
where horses still died & turned
into bar stools. i needed a real turn.
the kind that could do away with 
everything useless in the atmosphere.
i took my place at the back 
of a long line spilling down the street.
no one asked what we were waiting for
but waiting is worth waiting.
as for the house, i forgot 
my gender in the basement & it got
covered in white-blue mold. 
i'll need to throw it out & start
scouring clouds for a new one.
i have a problem throwing away
rotted things. once i kept 
a melting cucumber in the fridge
in the hopes it would liven up again. 
yesterday i was some kind 
of husband to a clock tower.
cleaned her face with a blue rag 
i would keep in my back pocket.
the day before that your guess
is as good as mine. linear is overrated.
i do know that in a past life 
my knuckles slept so long
they grew a layer of moss. the line
doesn't move it just gets longer.
we think we're waiting for 
a parking ticket. i'm not but they are.
the spring is going to be 
magnificent or at least 
that's what i have to tell myself.
maybe i'll be a grave digger 
or a boat driver. you take out
your tongue to make room
for my fist. my fist is just
a kind of aquarium. i swim with 
tuesday water. just like that
no line anymore. a direct march 
up the road. snakes moving towards
the next moon. the moon is 
secretly full of unblessed communion wafers.
i have less & less need for elbows.
tie my hands behind my back 
so we can be evenly devoted.
you are all i need to keep eating.
i see your eyes peer from under the bed
& i pry another can of peaches open.
who is going to know what
we saw? you won't tell &
neither will i. 
i'll cut the road in half
& you tie off the wound. 

wawa sign

we pull off from endless.
carry doors in our pockets & our teeth
& our shoulders. i'm driving the car 
away or towards philly 
& you're toying with the broken radio
that keeps singing opera. the night
is coming for us & we've spent
other driver's tail lights 
on keeping the machine. dashboard feet.
hands tangling & untangling. early in love
we could spin any road into enchanment.
passing towns started to feel like
spending tokens. little house after little house.
dead car backyards. are we all taking turns
being each other's passerby? 
before we go inside the gas station 
we sort our savings in the cup holder.
quarters & wrinkled dollars & 
lonely dimes. enter as neon men.
fingers eager for wrapper crinkle
& safe passage. watch truckers
fill buckets of soda & a woman 
eating a soft pretzel 
by the trash can. she stares off
with a glowing phone in one hand.
we love to be urgent & impatient.
see the licorice rope highway outside.
buy gum & swallows 
& cosmic brownies. kiss haloed 
by gasoline smell. linger longer
than we should. the luminesce 
of the sign sketching shadow's
in the front seat. he puts
his legs across my lap & leans
the seat back. engines start & stop
around us like doors. 

the snakes are ravenous

i watch them swallow a neighbor dog 
& then a trophy & then a school bus tire.
i tug my father's sleeve & tell him
to watch this video of 
a snake devouring a lizard.
we try to snake-proof the house 
with rock music & sad poetry.
dad gets on his knees & peers
at the houses's nonesense spaces.
in one hole in the wall he glimpses
a little video of me as a girl
eating a gummmy snake. 
in another crack he finds
himself as a child dancing with snakes.
ours is a history of this particular repitle
swelling larger & larger in our minds
until now when there's nothing 
we can think of but snakes.
over dinner we say
did you see the snake do this? &
are you afraid 
of the snakes doing that?
in the morning we get up & check
our blankets for snakes 
& our skin for snake bites. 
when i was younger i used to want
to keep them as pets. my father 
encouraged this danger. he bought 
a calliope of jars to house 
said monsters. he taught me
how to lure mice from the fields
to feed future snakes. we were two 
reptile yearners. separately
we both wanted to lose our limbs 
& belly slither into coves
where only snakes can fit. 
out there in the world a snake
is a collaping adjent. they bite
the ankles of joggers & tie knots
around television faces. they ache
like only a needy heart can. 
preparing for love's dangerous
can often take the place of loving.
we found no snakes in the house
& we know we never will.
the searching is the exact addiction
we need. in the trees, snakes are
learning from birds. in the water
snakes are coaxing stories from 
giant squid. it is only a matter of time
before they tell us finally
what we should be doing with our hands.
before one enters the house 
& eats the family from our bones.
my father works in the basement
on a giant wooden snake. i work 
in my bedroom on a snake
made of nothing but need for 
more escapes. i watch a video online
of a giant snake slowly devouring 
larger & larger animals. lizard.
hawk. dog. cat. human. house.
street. siren. radio tower.
there's a theory 
we could already be inside a snake.
i open a window just to hear
the soft snake sounds below.
rustle of a moon. wire fence clink.
a snake is on its way. 

rentable boyfriend

we can take this by the hour 
or by the day. if it's better for you,
decide as you go 
what length you'd like to attempt my body.
consider me a parking meter or a hotel room. 
i'll be whatever kind of temporary you want.
in the city, i drove by a store where you could rent
anything: fridges & beds & folding chairs.
i imagined the brief thrill 
of those pleasures. i am renting
my soul from someone else. it's silky
& at night sometimes dances like a ribbon.
i'm paying by the month. it almost feels mine.
tell me love, what are you borrowing? 
what are you earning?
sometimes i dream of perminance. i look up
houses for sale nearby. page through their photos
knowing i can't render that kind of realness.
i bought a sink & sat it in the hallway
waiting for the water to flow all by itself. 
i'm open to whatever brevities you're craving.
let's eat trees. let's pinch donuts
& fill our throats with powdered sugar.
for the time being i'm whatever you need.
we can walk down to the lake & toss in
our old shoes or just sit on the couch
& stare the television to gold. 
once, i rented myself beautiful 
for a night in april.
a teenager, i knew nothing about how 
increasingly hard it would be to experience 
fixed glimmer. stood on rented mountains.
ate rented words. kissed rented mouths.
the difference was i trusted it all.
cars drove like whales of diamond. 
the boy who rented me paid me in 
fingers & shoulders. how could i
have let myself be chosen so easily?
not again though. now we know 
what we'll be to each other. measurements
of distance. the length of my chest
to yours. a rented door knob 
to a rented heart. tell me please
what kind of palpable are you craving?

singing aloud to my dog

my voice like a frying pan,
round & weighty, grasped by the handle, 
i tell her i used to have 
a more usable tone
made of tin foil & string.
used to sit beside piano benches 
& throat-step notes like stairs
towards a vibrating attic.
like all young girls, i wanted 
to be a singer. wanted to open my mouth
& have a flock of birds emerge 
without warning. 
there were girls in my grade
like that. they had golden jaws
& burned violins in their front lawns.
i didn't bedroom lip sync 
or cry into mirrors. i tried so hard
to melody. swallowed a yellow bird.
slept on other feather pillows.
made sacrifices 
of second-hand flutes &
warped trumpets to the moon.  
still, i sounded the same.
now, like any real boy, my voice
is seldom useful or needed. 
i hum leather shoe fragments.
i scoop the name from songs.
tell me, do i sound like a father
or a front door? tell me,
do you hear the furrow where 
there used to be a strand of long
bowing hair? an opera is lurking
in every gender. mine is about
a snow-wanderer in the midst 
of a wild summer. i'm sure 
you have one too maybe about
a child born as a dog. 
if i had more teeth
i would remove one as a little
trap door for harmony to emerge.
who am i kidding? nothing from my lips
come out alive. once,
i found a very dead bird there.
cradled her to the backyard
to burry her. there i saw
all the pretty young girls
having a chorus without me.
you have to understand how much
this hurt me. my heart turned into 
a pipe organ i don't know
how to play. dear one, thank you
for your audience. for hearing
my mouth for what it is:
a mostly useless dresser drawer 
with a few lullabies left.

b/w

my dog has started painting
on an easel in the living room.
she stays up later than me 
& from my bed i call her saying 
come to sleep, come to sleep.
i used to be like that in high school
night-drunk & eager to write 
bad poems about senseless boys. 
i typed bent over a keyboard in the company 
of lost headlights tracing 
the road our house rested on.
she's done mostly still-lives with a few
portraits of me at my computer.
she sees in black & white so 
her use of color is sporadic & haunting.
today she painted me with green hair
& a pair of burn orange shoes.
yesterday she painted me 
only in white 
with lavender
to outline my features. she sees
something in me other people don't--
how underneath the skin there are
colors burrowed like voles.
she paints a red knife & a brown
mirror. she paints the scrunched face
of a neighbor all cerulian & navy blue.
laps water in between projects 
& coils, exhausted, at my feet.
i tell her she should take a break.
i hold a tennis ball & tilt it playfully
in front of her face. she nudges it away.
she has so much work to do. i can tell.
i buy her new paints & new canvases.
open the blinds when she asks.
feed her treats as she paints & paints: 
catelogging all the miscellaneous items 
on my desk. one night i find her
whimpering over a half-finish painting
done in black & white. it's me again
only this time hovering a half inch 
above my bed. she takes the picture
& run out the back door with it.
suddenly everything brims with 
black & white. the march of grey scales
across our house. i see what she sees.
i scoop handfuls of dark
to try & save her. walk dark wood
& bleating moon until i discover tracks
red with wanting. there she is 
at the end of them--chewing the canvas
to pieces. i carry her home 
like a bundle of color. pet her gently 
at the end of the bed. color returns
over the course of the next week
but all her images remain
black & white. we hang them up
as a relic of her painting days.
now she sleeps & chew raw hide 
& digs holes in the walls. sometimes
i tap her old pictures in the hopes
the color will flicker back.
but it never does.