re-fathering

the corn maze stole our pelvises
& rattle-snake shook in the pink wind.
i crawled inside. reptiled 
on my belly. tasted the air
with a tea spoon & the atmosphere
was thick as cream. how deep the maze goes
no one is sure. it began one afternoon
with a father who wanted to lose 
his children. he planted & pictured 
& laughed his vertabrae into a maze. 
his children disappeared quickly
as all children do when their father
invents them a beautiful trap. they grew back
as single stalks & their corn 
tasted like metal. they gave up
on retreiving their bones but not me.
i learned to slither.
i learned bathroom tile across my skin
to make scales. tried to stop thinking 
of nightlights & the scruff of mean's beards
as i became smoother & smoother despite
the dirt. in danger, men get rigid
but queers, we polish. i could feel 
my lapis showing & by quartz face.
i talked to the corn children 
thinking they would point me 
towards that bone i craved but 
they had been too long in the labrinth--
too committed to lostness. they turned me
every which way. i trusted only 
a single cloud who nodded when i was
getting closer. landscapes
are mostly un-trustworthy.
the father was my own but he could
have been anyone's you know? all fathers
share that looming. what does it matter
whose father it was & how he grabbed
my hips like a skull? i dug the bone free
with my bare hands. soil under my nails
& the children all hissing & whining.
throwing tandrums because they didn't want
me to leave them to their sorrowing.
i told them that soon enough it would be winter
& they would wither to nothing but necks.
this didn't comfort them but 
you can't comfort the betrayed. oh brothers,
someday i'll return with a fresh father
made of lambs ear & wool. 
until then i know you will go on
baring metal kernals & misguiding 
each stranger sibling who stumbles inside. 
i escaped & the air ripended to red.
i put my pelvis on 
like a skull. 

apple cannon

october smashed into me
with handfuls of jupiter orange
& family in their cockpits.
it rained the afternoon we drove
to shoot apple cannons 
at the fall festival. the corn field
asked our names over & over 
& only i refused to give mine up.
i had multiplying brothers
& a handful of father. i had a leash
to drag a portrait by. the gravel
under my shoes echoed slick with grey.
everyone gathered to shoot.
hurl perfectly beautiful apples 
at faraway targets. load the ripe ammo
into the cannon's mouth. i used to feed
myself like this. one hesitant hand
loading the machine.
my family gathered around, waiting.
mcintosh & red delicious & winesape apples
all going guts for the thrill of it.
the months they swelled 
holding a tree arm delivered them
to our destruction basket. never
hitting target. rogue apples
smacking against a wall of rocks.
skin scuffed clean of their faces.
i took my own fist & considered
squeezing it until it turned red
& almost apple but no. i held on to 
the kick of the cannon. laughter like
leaves dropping hurriedly from children.
we needed the cannon to know us
so we shot more. brothers grew stems 
& mother coiled in a far away pie tin.
i could blame them but it was me
who insisted on still dressing
as a ghost around them. they stopped asking
when are you going to take that off?
& started taking polaroids without me.
apple graveyards. candied apples.
apples weeping their smooth amber seeds 
into the grass, futilly, knowing 
none will take root. the orchard,
like my family, standing tall & still.
worshipping future cannons. 
licking their thumbs clean 
where their apples departed. 

communion 

we slept with donuts on our chests.
jelly & angel cream & old fashioned.
finger-smeared their sweet &
wiped palms on blankets. the moon 
candied herself & we wanted as she 
took a seat in a wooden pew.
we tried so hard to disciple
all across the week. cupped our
cherries & carried them down 
to where other dogs whimpered
at windchimes. sharing food
is a form of severing. here is
what my mouth would have known.
in the church of our sugar no one 
had enough. only the stars shed
their skin. we held tight 
to everything. stapled windows shut. 
locked the cabinets to prevent 
morsels from escaping. spoons 
for forearm bones, we prayed
by opening wide as we could. let him
see all the years of eating 
we'd contained. there's a lot you can learn
by peering down a throat :
how did this person survive their februaries?
what can they certainly not live without?
for me its the donuts. i prefer powdered.
all the remnants they leave. 
white foot prints 
leading down into my pulpit.
i can't sleep with all the chewing
but i can at least join in. on the sidewalk
glass red horses are on their way 
to be sucked on & lollipops wink 
innapropriately at every passerby. 
it didn't always used to be like this.
sometimes, we used to settle down
& just bite celery for a week or two.
not anymore. not anymore. god said
the way to salvation is through 
pleasure. then he just laughed
& returned to his restaurant 
at the impossible part of town. 
we hope he will come munch with us
one night. i leave donuts 
on my windowsill. i dream i'll glimpse
his hand reaching 
& grasping one tight. then
*chewing noises*

keeping

i found magazine shreds 
in the tall grass field 
by the dentist's office
on the first day i moved back 
to my parent's house. 
it was lightly raining
& the pages stuck to my fingers 
as i knelt to pluck them. red truck 
rushed past then a parade of black cars.
everyone was carrying a funeral 
inside their chest where a bird
used to be. my hair was longer
than i had ever imagined
& i tucked strand behind my ear
over & over. april knew nothing
about me. i peered at the fragments
as i harvested them. did not
try to rationalize the action 
as by this point i knew very little
about what my hands wanted. 
collected every piece i could
& departed up the hill 
on noble street. stole thick coffee
from mom's pot & slipped
into my childhood bedroom still tinged
with previous dusts & fingernails. 
i sat on the speckled carpet
to arrange the pieces. there had to be
a picture to be found. afterall,
this was about discovery. about
prying open the old town & finding
a radical face to clutch me.
over & over i wonder: how how how. 
downstairs mom watched the news until
the living room felt like an ambulance.
none of us left. we said virus prayers.
the fragments left no conclusions.
one bare leg. one lip. a tan ankle.
maybe the curve of a back then 
rain droplets & warped wanting.
i googled the last three letters
of the dismantled title & found
a porn magazine. girls on their knees.
men groveling & begging. a ball gag.
a pink bikini. tired imagine what it meant
for someone to ravage their once-desires.
i prefer to think of them crouched,
like i was, on the side of the road
as cars rush past saying
"no more of this, the world is ending."
i am not sure why i keep them
but it felt wrong to dispose of. maybe
they feel like evidence we are still
alive, maybe i want to be a picture
undone by a man on the side of the road. 
want someone to piece me together
& keep me despite my lack of cohesion.
my favorite piece is one of just 
a smokey mascaraed eye & slight bridge 
of a nose. her face is somewhere. 

breaking out into feathers 

the roadkill on noble street is reliable.
always one by the bottom of the hill
& one near the parker's drive way & another
deposited by commonwealth road.  
i'd hold mini funerals in my head
as i'd walk past squirrels & rabbits 
& the occasional folded bird on my way
to middle school. saying to myself, 
"i bet they thought they were headed 
towards more green."
saying, "i wish i could burry you."
i tried once. this one particular bird 
with its wings splayed out as if 
statued in mid-flight. hints of iridecense 
made dawn light echo in her feathers.
i'd stolen a ziploc bag from the cupboard
& thought i could use it to lift the bird 
at least into the nearby field.
i knelt down & couldn't do it. not because
the body replused me but because
the bird stared into me & saw my bones
with what was left of her bold black eyes. 
i knew what it was like for her to perch
& flock & flush.
i thought she'd start thrashing 
if i grasped her.
come alive & refuse to be buried. i gave up though 
& left her there. watched slowly
as she turned from feather to meat 
to bone. i learned too much from those creatures.
found morning and mourning to be closer
than they seemed. how daybreak
comes to remind us of our bodies
& their sequences. all my short funerals
i attended in secret. walking over 
& over. when i visit my parent's house
i still amble the same path each morning. i am
a scheme of habits & re-memories. 
there's no sidewalk on noble street 
& sometimes the cars drive too close. 
yesterday a truck's side grazed my shoulder 
& i could have sworn
i broke out in feathers. my heart
quick as a bird's as i watched the tail lights 
dissapear into the corn fields. 
all these animals are still resting 
in me. how have i become a catacomb 
for brief lives. 

balance

like an angel, a white tern 
visits my wooden kitchen room 
& makes a tree of me.
they're known for laying eggs
right on tree branches. no nest at all.
i used to climb trees as a kid. i was
smooth & as unknowingly fragile
as an egg. the sun made a sitting room
of my heart. sometimes i fell 
& took a piece of sky down with me.
hid the fragment from all my friends 
& soon lovers. the shards always dissolved
leaving little white stains 
wherever they had laid. the white tern waits 
till i'm standing at the kitchen counter
& looking out the back window at
the piling snow. again, i'm washing 
the same plate. again, i'm considering
which bowl to scrape with one of two spoons. 
living alone in february leads to echos,
faint pulses of waiting for ancienct greens.
one egg deposited on my collar bone. 
another on my nose & a final right 
at the crown of my head. future birds.
i thank the white tern for flying
all the way from the tropics just 
to teach me how to balance. how to lay
a life in skin-bone crease like i used to
when the world had more beds & more aching.
when they hatch i will be a mother.
hopefully not a father. by then maybe
the snow will have melted & i can sit 
on my porch & tell them everything i can
about flight. until then, i can be still.
their little impending wings wink at me.
i ask the white tern not to leave 
but she must. leaves one feather 
on the sill before departing,
smeared into the white glowing snow. 

soon & never arrivals 

on the morning the street outside turned to glass
i was in a hurry to become less filament & more
fur. i had been in the backyard collecting
ivy from the side of the apartment building.
birds were making fun of me for my round face
& the single feather that sprouts & resprouts 
from my back. i never meant to be a hybrid animal.
i always thought i could be a fabulous hair dresser
or at least a hammer-boy. cars slid past like magic tricks
towards the river. a man walked around placing
"fragile" stickers all over the ground. no one
heeded their warning. engines spun & people still
insisted on going where they'd intended to go:
groceries & funerals & kissing booths & fountains
& the city. meanwhile, i waited & watched 
from my porch. saw my warped reflection in 
the newly glass road & saw as cars moved across
my old face. how had i become such a vigil-keeper?
where was my leopard print coat? 
i felt no impulse to join the falling. cars plopping 
into the river-water one by one. on glass,
they could not turn away. fed themselves 
to the rocks & the rush. they each left a mirror version
still driving on the road without material.
i considered shedding my skin once & for all.
i could just live in mirrors & windows. 
be the animal i had always wanted to be: thin 
& indiscoverable & always observing.
when had my feet served me anyway? yet, i held on
to the thought maybe one day the road 
would be asphalt again. sturdy. no duplicate
looking back at me & i could follow it 
over the river & towards another town & another.
could still make a phelogeny in my body
if i tried hard enough. i would pause at the bridge 
to listen for the ghost cars & their impulse to arrive. 
do you ever check your reflection is stil yourself? 
i held my hand up & my glass road figure did as well. 
blew him a kiss & watched another vehicle leak past
& then men on their backs, sliding, gazing dreamily up
at the lightbulb sun. i plucked out my feather 
& dropped it to the ground to be swept past 
with all the other arriving. 

what will you be for halloween?

i have been sewing shadows together
all winter. pried from the backs of
strangers: a december bird, a frozen birch,
a bundled man passing 
on his twig-like bicycle. one deep shadow
from the apartment building
cut free with only my craft scissors.
i'm trying to make do with the supplies
around me. i lick my thumb to stick 
my horns on each night & sometimes,
for my fangs, i just take a pencil sharpner 
to each canine. they're always dulling.
i don't know what i am yet or what
i will be for the remaining dead days.
ghost neighbors light little fires all across
the back of the mountain. smoke blows upwards
like grey veils. each stiched shadow 
gives the costume a new shape. 
i could be a broken house
or a crooked hand or a february 
too thick with loneliness or a leaf 
holding on by its neck. that's the thing
about shadows. they give away everything
& nothing. when i scrape off my own
it always comes back--more jagged each time.
sharper edges. angrier lines. i'm becoming
something else each morning as i work.
see my outline swell & shrink.
a breathing beast. where will i go
with my new design? whose house
will still have a door next year?
in the woods there is the ruins 
of an old structure. walls of stacked stone
& a  skull-nose entrance. i could
go there with my body & rattle
my soul & see what arrives. i haven't seen
sugar for a long time. it's going to snow
tonight & i pray for mistakes of nature.
a layer of sweet crystal. blued shadows
to pluck from the white. 

apocolypse singing on the orange-blinking road 

we took our ostriches
down to nowhere. their eyes 
like marbel dungeons & their 
foot prints dinosaur-fossiling 
across the last boulevard. gravel & 
gear & grim evening. trees like 
monkey's paws. sachels full of soda tabs. 
we didn't think we would survive the ice zone
or the lily waste. took no time
feeling thankful & just kept knuckling. 
our dogs with their snake faces tasting 
citrus in the air or morsels. i could use
a morsel. something dark & lime.
someone sings just beyond sight.
a kind of monsterous singing--
loud like a pipe organ & we are both
made young & church-bound again.
your face stain-glasses over. 
you stand still like a grave marker. 
your bird shaking you off her back. 
i'll soon have to leave you. 
the red all road. the road all red.
i have nothing left to move towards
but vibration & lichen feathers. you were
a good traveler too but in this landscape 
face is made shatterable by simply 
the wrong memory. we used to eat from the hands 
of elephant men. we used to trust
even the ankles of passing shadow-throwers
& now here we are with our lists
of departures. you don't even speak
my name. i knock on your collar bone
& it sounds wooden as a front door.
nothing said nothing lost. my tongue 
twists like a barbershop poll. lingering
is what kills you but also what
makes you real. without lingering
what am i but a bouquet of steps?
the singing softens. think nothing
of boy-girlhood or its velvets.
i was never anything & neither were you. 

frankenstein 

i stiched three birds together
to make a flock. licked the thread
before i slipped through the needle's head.
everything is a tight window. 
in my shop, i consider blood 
& how to adhere one bone to another.
taxidermied a six legged chicken 
& watched it scurry through my dusk-thoughts.
each day, in the nearby woods i'm watching 
a sapling challenge the adjacent trees.
i hold my arm up to a bright lamp
to see my blue veins like tree roots.
lay in the sun & dream of giving myself
a pair of feathered wings. i need 
a lover to place them though. someone
with a steady hand. someone else 
who thinks of the hem between bodies 
& souls. someone else who believes blood
should flow like rivers. i practice
on myself sometimes. i take a button
& sew it into my chest. little useless thing.
in the graveyard, everyone is 
reduced to material. i go with my trow
& my bucket to search for new parts.
dirt smudged knees. do you judge me?
we are all making do. what i create 
is already there. if you place your arm
next mine i'll show you
were the veins could mesh. underneath
the forest trees roots nudge 
& wrap around one another. a catelog
of twist ankles. this is only natural
to want to make breathing piecemeal.
a thread of thunder also resembles 
a bright root. my veins run skyward.
i'm spreading the system. the flock flies.
all three heads scream. dissapears
into the woods. i'll let you see
my scissors. i'll let you touch 
the needle. just a needle nothing more
& soon the body will rise. taller than
the sapling. lungs like wings.
heart like a windup toy. we will talk
for hours in the basement. 
i'll teach him to hold 
the needle steady. here are where
i want my wings. here is the roof
i need to spring from.