deer who are not there

i find their footprints.
follow them into the dark. 
you are calling me nonstop.
we do not ever rid ourselves
of one another. a first love is like
a broken sundial. i was talking to you
in the wild rain. the deer were there too.
are always there & not there.
when a deer dies too soon her ghost lasts
as long as the earth. i find them devouring
ghost corn at the cross roads. i sleep
for seven days & seven nights. the land 
asks who i am & i explain that i 
have never known. the pangea 
of my heart. not a fracture but a 
slow separation. you have my mountain
on your face. the deer, like soldiers 
in the moon-cast shadows. i eat nothing.
become a deer & then a deer ghost too.
there is a skeleton which i have watched
disperse on the side of the road. 
first the coyotes came & then the foxes 
& then the gardener & then the birds
& the bugs & the teenagers who drive drunk
through the field roads. litter their little bottles
in the crooks of the path's neck. that deer
tries her best to follow her body. a rib carried
to the creek. a tooth on my necklace.
i feed the bones when i remember to.
a pocket of goji berries. a splash of soda. 
we all get what we can. i have a highway life.
most of the time all i can do is love 
like a gas station. come here. be a deer 
in the distance. follow the light.
i almost have what you need. 

i buy you a cow

we bring her to the moon. tell her to drink
until time stops. i have been hungry 
in the old ways. persimmon tongued 
without enough sugar. i was wrong to think
there is a life for us behind some door. still i pull them
& behind none are cows. instead,
there are coat hangers & copy machines.
people sitting around a board room table
making choices about the future of water about
how & where our hearts will be useful fruit. 
my ghost has a hollow she goes to when she
needs to be dangerous. we cut down a tree 
& find a cow inside. we open the crawlspace
& discover my father sleeping there. he had
been looking for the moon in all the small places.
the gone time is here. it is far too late. 
all there is left to do is suck on a crab apple
& harvest the stars. i used to ask you if you thought
i was a boy or a girl. now i ask, "do you think i am
the cow or you?" i know it is me. i am holding 
a whole future in my guts. the grass shrinks 
in autumn. the dampening of the wings at night.
soft seeds. we turn on the oven & pretend we are
about to eat something. open all the windows.
cows come from every direction. i say,
"we are home." you are delighted. we find a boarder 
& turn it into a jump rope. the office buildings 
have no cows. up the street they are talking
to money. they are holding money. they are 
digging in the field for money. they find all of it.
they have no cows. someone of them turn their
loved ones into money. so much of it. 
still no milk. no moon. our first cow, full 
of so much light. gibbous in her irises. 
she asks us, "how long until they find us there?" 

baby picture

when i'm not looking my
baby pictures turn into photos
of worms. it is really for the best.
i do not want to be small. 
the grape vine tells me i am 
on many lists. some good & some horrible.
sometimes i wonder if i stop taking
my meds if maybe the baby pictures
would return & there might be
a river that returns between me now
& the me who had more eyes. i do not know
if it miss feeling or i miss the kind
of art it gave me. in some ways i am lucky.
we didn't take a lot of baby pictures 
of my siblings. i have the most dedication.
even a little book recording my "firsts."
first national tragedy. first fire moon.
first neighbor running in the street
without eyes. one christmas we watched
this factory burn down. it used to be
right across from our house. i remember
a window full of babies. i was always 
trying to tell them, "come here, 
i have spearmint!" they couldn't get out.
if i had my way i would want my pictures
to show someone else. maybe someone 
who stays a worm forever. gets to be devoured
by a really good bird. one with feathers 
bright & endless. i do have one picture
of myself as a pilot. i am in an airplane
above the town. i point & there is the diner.
i point & there is the quarry where 
years ago another plane went down. 
an umbilical cord of smoke. i do not know
what the obsession is with going up 
in the sky when we die. i am looking forward
to the dirt. to joining my sibling worms. 
wriggling the soil. the sun, like a face
above a night. sometimes they'll offer me
the photos to take home. i say yes 
but leave them on the porch. i would rather
not see how much i have been devoured.
i like to think of each day as if i am waking up
as a fresh animal. all my hearts like
a rosary down my body. again & again,
here i am all worms. 

hover board

i want to be an animal.
i always have. in the summer
as a kid, i went barefoot as many
places as i could. the sun. the moon.
the roof. my father's back. 
a gun barrel my neighbor would point
at the stars in the hopes of bringing
his wife  home. the field dogs
slipping behind the curtain 
& back. i read on my little portal 
that there is going to be a mandatory 
hover board training school. we will 
all be above the ground. slowly
we will move into the sky. grow meat
from tiny tubes. they are saying 
it is for our own good but it is really
because a hover board is better than
a horse by which i mean good for
war. good for money gods & their
tunnels dug deep in the earth.
i think i will be bad at this next phase
of horrible. i might scramble down
to where the last dinosaurs are playing
pinball in the dark. i love the old machines
with the xylophone sounds. maybe if i
study the dinosaurs legs i can get
my belly to the earth. i can walk across
the bright language until i am talking
to the trees again & the flowers admit
their breaking names. i know how
these things go. eventually, the hover board
will seem so old that i'll end up one day
driving one without even remembering
when it is i gave in. i am hoping i am 
a dinosaur & not a bug. i do not want 
to survive too much. i would like
my bones to mean something to whatever
ghost finds me. i hope they crouch in
the dirt. i hope they do not wear gloves 
& that my grease makes the sound of a star. 

a dozen eggs

the chickens love to eat 
their own eggs. beaks dripping
with yolk. the sun, throws
here autumn tongue down.
you always tell me i should
not let them feast like this. 
you want the eggs harvested
in the woven basket by the door.
washed in the sink until they are
smooth as polished stones. the chickens 
are not wise creatures. they pluck
what they must from the tall grass
around the yard. a grub. a worm.
a frog. i learn their voices. the youngest ones
who have yet to start laying 
speak with a chattering softness
that the older ones do not have. 
what shape does their own yolk
make in their mouths? does it sound
like a return or a swelling? 
sometimes we will find eggs hidden 
throughout the yard. a cluster beneath
the sycamore. a pile in the hay hutch. 
when they are through, scattered shells
lay all broken window in the dirt. 
i support their strange celebration.
a feast of the body taking back her suns. 
we hardly ever collect a dozen eggs. 
old cartons half-mouthed in the windowsill. 
i rake their coop. they peer at me, their intruder. 
the rooster, with his eyes like dream doors,
watches over the flock. 

flower melt 

last year a funeral in the attic. 
i call my aunt who does not live
there anymore. her number is given
to someone else who therefore gets
a piece of her life. i planted flowers by the road
& they are starting to order fancy jewelry 
on amazon. i tell them, "we are trying
to not buy from there anymore."
the flowers will be ghosts soon. they have
nothing to lose. sometimes i am a flower
& sometimes i am a chainsaw. my father
visits unannounced. it is always december
in my family. the precipice of some kind
of momentous ending. i am a lineage breaker. 
i put flowers in my hair & accept
that their bells are full of bugs. 
my aunt had a cloud of hair. sometimes
she would rain. the summer i lived 
with her & her sister was full of ghosts. 
standing in the back yard when the moon
would not stop ringing. why couldn't we
keep the trees? they knew us. they yielded 
fruit for us. how could they become 
someone else's trees? the carpet full of
melting flowers. i bought a wax husband 
when i lived in the mountains. the cold ate holes
through the walls until i was barefoot in 
a field of flowers. my aunt lost her fiance 
decades before i knew her. he was driving
a shiny car when the world filled with flowers. 
loss is a potato. the root & the feast. 
my arms in the soup finally. the flowers 
are giving their last go. puckered faces.
soon the mornings will frost. my aunt will 
wander out into the yard. her trees flowers
in someone else's hair. 

times i have lied to my doctor

winter parking lot. the sun behind
a frosted window. yes i am breathing.
yes i sleep at night. no i do not have
a bomb behind my eyes. no i do not
have nightmares any more. yes my sex life
is full of flowers. i eat enough protein.
there is a stray cat who i feed. who i invite
inside my house. who stands on two legs
& weeps with me. when my phone rings
i always pick it up. it is never god
though i want it to be. no i am not
thinking of an elevator shaft. yes 
i pee a regular amount. no i am not feeling
like there is a cloud of knives perched
right outside my life. no my father 
never hit me. no my father is not
feeding a ghost from the palm of his hand. 
yes my body is doing what it is supposed to.
i have a neighbor who i talk to every day 
& we trade sounds of the fields we adore.
cicada. lawn mower. field plane. the drones
do not alarm me. it is not my birthday.
yes i fasted before the blood test. no i do not
have enough sugar. yes the medication
is working. yes i do not have anything else
i want to fix. no i have never pulled my car over 
outside of a new development & tried to remember
what the field looked like. work is going well.
i have so much love in my hair. i do not
need to check my bank account. we will 
figure it out if the government is listening.
no they will not take everything. yes i am sure. 
outside the haze thickens to a broth.  

i see the doctor in his car after. he eats a hoagie
with the window cracked. 

snowflake photographs

i got a toys r us microscope.
i wanted to see everything. 
eyelashes & fruit fly faces.
once, my own blood smashed
between two glass plates. i considered
myself a scientist. i wanted toi 
discovery something but i wasn't
sure what. winter came. less to see. 
in school we learned about 
a photographer who became obsessed
with photographing snowflakes. 
obsession is my favorite sacrament
for any animal. at first the flakes
would melt while he lined up 
the shot. i thought maybe i could
see what he did. this was back
when we lived across from the park.
i walked there on an afternoon
when no one else but my sibling
was home. it was snowing. just flurries.
i caught one & rushed it inside,
just to find it melted. a wet blotch
on the piece of paper i had taken with me. 
the teacher had projected his snowflake images
onto the walls. i remember thinking that
they looked like moth eyes. so many
little diamonds. the sky knitting 
so many tiny cathedrals. i imagined
stepping inside one just for its moment,
one second before my flesh turned
walls into water. he photographed thousands.
learned to bring his camera into 
the new england cold. i gave up quickly
on being a scientist. never managed to see
a snowflake alive up close. my obsession was
not as material as his. i am still collecting 
patterns. turns of the tongue. blood
dried on a microscope slide. the bulb
glowing in the corner of that demolished house
across from the park. so many fly-wings, beating. 

milk bath

last night the ocean
was full of tornados. i invited you
when i shouldn't have & everyone
was awkward. i found a patch of mushrooms
to harvest up the street. we slept in
bunk beds. you parked your car
across two spots & i thought "wow."
for years we had no bathtub so when
it finally arrived on centipede legs
we tried to not to question it.
you told me, "i am going to get younger."
i have never been one to try & prevent aging.
i welcome it. i do not have anything
that i need to preserve. i am a queer
monster baby & that is all i strive to be.
the windows of the air b&b shattered
in the storm. i thought, "i hope this doesn't
destroy my phone" as the waves crashed
into the living room. i wondered too
if this was retribution for using easy-life
machines to get closer to the water. 
the water says, "i do not recognize you.
please come home." i will be walking my house
around & think to myself, "i want to be home."
there is no conclusion. the word unwound 
& rewound. i stained the negatives so now
we have to pretend like we know each other's names.
of course, i know yours. i keep it written
underneath my tongue in case we run into each other.
walking in the shattered glass i realized the water
was not water at all but milk. i laid down
in a white glossy puddle. cool milk. 
flies starting to arrive to the scene of the crime.
you never got younger to the best of my knowledge.
the milk bath sat for days. turned into 
a shrine to our faces. a halo of wings. 
your skin, soft as mold velvet in the dark. 

vineyard

on the side of the hill
the grapes grow like eyes in the dark.
this year i started craving grapes.
i fill bowls. learn to swallow them
like great beads. a rosary without
a string. i imagine a vineyard
all to myself. the vines, like lost 
jump ropes. the snake who eats 
his tail. i could walk there in 
the moonless-dark to see all the world
wide open. i have gotten less hungry 
with age that is except for grapes.
i want to be so full of grapes that
the vines mistake me for a great fruit. 
that they try to feed me light color & crush.
my lover tells me i cannot buy
any more grapes. the fridge is full
to the gills. i weep. what will i do when
my hunger returns? when i am armless
& have to slither through the brush?
i wash them in the sink. hold them
up to the light. at first i prefered
the green ones but lately i have needed
deep purple grapes to fall asleep. 
once when i worked at the apple orchard
they sent me to the vineyard a few fields down 
instead. the people were different there.
everyone had grapes for eyes. they plucked 
them out to work without all the sun.
i watched them grow-back. a soft swell.
i woke up in the middle of the following night
to check that i still had eyes & not fruit. 
in the mirror i saw the vineyard behind me,
large & outstretched. i turned around
& walked the rows. maybe i never came back.
here i am though, a grocery store ghost
chasing a sugar night. i put one in my mouth
& it blinks.