little piles 

i live my life in 
small mountains. a pile
of fingers. a pile of letters that
for whatever reason we are unable
toss to the compost. my partner calls me
the architect of piles. this is sometimes
a compliment & sometimes a grievance. 
all the prophets these days are passing 
by in algorithm soup. i saw a post
a few days ago that read,
"i refuse to keep my house
looking as if we do not live there."
i do not even remember who wrote those words 
but suddenly, i am in love with our clutter. 
the piles of books & the piles of dried
corn husks. the piles of abandoned 
spider webs & the piles of shoes 
worn down to the earth. 
i do not want to have a life in which
my feet do not touch the ground 
& i do not ever track dirt into the hall. 
i want to live a life in which i sweep each night.
see in the dust pan a tiny night sky.
all the stars are lost marbles. beads from
a broken bracelet. i make another pile
& another. we go to sleep inside of one
& wake up in another. as a child,
i used tp be ashamed of our house's mess.
used to choose instead to meet friends
in the graveyard. piles of bones. piles of leaves.
now when visit my parents' house
i find a history of piles. the piles of tomatoes.
last of the season. piles of bills waiting
to turn back into moths. piles of 
our cut hair. year after year, falling as horses.
we live here. we live here. we live here. 

orchid keeper

i lose my head & live a tiny green life.
in my house-sitting days every place
had orchids. they liked to speak in parables.
once, i sat down & a white & blush orchid
told me, "there was a girl
without any parents. she emerged 
from the earth." i thought the flower
was talking about me so i ran away
& did not get to hear the end of the story.
what happened to her? is that why
there's always dirt under my fingernails?
i think politics are awful & i would rather
just sit with the orchids & try to not die. 
i hated caring for my clients' orchids. i was sure i was
watering them too much or too little. 
one woman had a husband with a whole room
of orchids. the chatter made it hard 
to sleep in that house. they talked all night,
repeating their stories to one another.
i spent the last dark of my stay, in their room
& let their voices wash over me. i craved an answer
to my wandering & thought maybe
that they had one. i lived on the cold side
of the sun. my bed was a staircase & 
the backseat of my grandmother's old car.
the orchids asked me, "do you want to become one of us?"
i turned them down. i was worried about
not being able to eat oatmeal anymore.
it's the small pleasures. an orchid spat off 
all her faces at me in a house with too many windows.
i harvested them. tried to put them back.
nothing left but big green shoulders
& a neck to the sky. the faces were of course
still talking. they promised me that 
on the other side of a bridge, there would be
a quiet place of syrup.  a story is sometimes the truth
& other times a comfort wagon. 
i do not think i am equipped to own orchids
maybe just to keep them. i know too well
how fickle they are. how easily a head is lost
& then we're in someone else's house
looking out the window at a night full of eyes. 

deer language 

i find a golden tongue
in the leaves. i put it in my mouth
& talk to the stars. their worries
are thick as squash soup. the deer come
because dusk taught them 
all the words they know. 
there is never enough time 
for sleep. i imagine hollowing out
a year with a wooden spoon. 
crawling inside & not having
to talk to any more fires. i crawl out of bed 
without wings again. i sew a pair of eyes
into the ground. bite the string.
once, as a child, a deer asked me,
"would you like a crown?" i felt
unworthy & so i denied it. the deer laughed
& said, "you cannot turn down
your antlers." i checked my head for weeks
terrified that i would wake up
with antlers budding from my head.
they never came but now i feel them.
the weight of holding a piece 
of the sky. each of us, little billboard painters.
i leave a puzzle with missing teeth. 
the deer, the same one that once visited me,
returns headless. he speaks using
the arms of the trees. his prophecy,
urgent now, is, "talk to all 
the colors you can before it is too late." 

unkept pronouns

let's never talk about the government again.
build a house with chicken legs to escape in.
i want to eat honeysuckles & learn
the language of the mosquitos so that i can bribe them
to drink my enemy's blood & tell me
what it tasted like. i have been
letting my pronouns get unruly lately. 
call me what you think i am. it's a game of
visibility. i am your magic 8 ball. shake me
& i'll give you a fortune or a warning.
aren't all fortunes warnings though?
if i lost my sense of taste i don't think i would
eat less. instead, i crave sugar like a butterfly. 
i have a bad habit of throwing things out
in preparation for a sudden & urgent runaway.
i get rid of the hedge trimmers & the scythe. 
the pronouns get weedy & unkept. the government 
punches a hole in my ear & tags me
like the dairy cows who roam the pasture looking
for a way out. i promised i would not
talk about the government but i am really sick
of considering what i should hide. i am too tired
to be anything but a menace. i let me pronouns
attract bugs. i get the hoa called on my pronouns.
they cultivate wild raspberries & i eat them
all myself. red-fingered & sweet. dandelions come
& sing their yellow hearts all night. a family member
buys me a push mower for christmas.
i bury it. i will not be tending this mess. 
i want to see how wild i can get. 

deep-fried communion wafers 

this is my get-holy quick scheme. 
we become miracles. maybe i'll wear 
stigmata & you can cry milk. we'll attract
all kinds of people. the believers & the curious
& the atheists. we'll make a carnival out of it.
neon halo. a lemonade stand. 
somewhere on the side of the highway that
makes a belt across the state. 
maybe we can take over that old building
that used to house the model train showcase. 
glow beneath a jesus billboard that asks,
"are you ready for him?" 
i'll dress in white & you can dress in black. 
we'll make big beautiful promises 
that never go anywhere. then, in the dark,
we can kiss each other like only trans people can.
we'll sell deep-fried communion wafers 
& offer them with powdered sugar.
tell everyone to lick their fingers clean. 
once, when i was an altar girl 
i dropped a consecrated host. i felt so bad about it.
i still believed that little piece of bread
was god. i actually still think it is but 
in a different way now. in the sense that there
is no god so we have to be him. 
we can get a few good years out of being
roadside holy. maybe make enough money
to buy a farm. i tell you all the time
about how badly i want a cow. we'll settle down
but still travelers will come to us.
they'll say, "i saw you years ago. you prayed
over us & we ate deep fried communion wafers." 
we'll make them again in a stove pot. 
i'll bring out my stigmata. you, a glass
of milk wept fresh for our visitors. 

re/growth

i was convinced my hair wouldn't grow back.
it is autumn now & still there are flowers 
who find reasons to open their eyes. i have been
warming up to the color yellow. 
when i shaved it all off, i remember collecting
the strands from the red tile bathroom floor.
i thought, "what have i done?" people like to say
"it will grow back" but what if there is not time?
the staircases & the windows. touch & evaporation. 
hair is not a limb but a place. when it is gone
that is like severing a house. i am great at leaving
& horrible at letting go. i prefer to still talk
to exes even though i hardly do. when it first started
to grow back i wanted every day to shave again.
to press the clippers to my scalp & say,
"i do not want to remember all the world
we can hold." to be bald meant to be untethered.
unmarked & unowned. my hair craves a place
to wash. a well to worship. my lover to learn 
exactly how i curl. so, i let it. i can almost pull my hair
into a ponytail. i tell myself that this time
next year the house might have
new windows. we might have a car that works.
my hair might almost be where it was
down my back. eager to be braided & pulled. 
on the hillside there are wayward crocuses. purple 
& meant for spring. i go to tell them the terrible news.
that soon winter will be here & that they 
are lost. they laugh at me. they say, "there is 
not point in arriving if we are never gone." 
i love my hair most when it is wet. when i sit
in the shower like i used to as child. pretend i am in
a lush rainforest. the bugs whine & gossip. 
the birds eat neat holes in the night sky. 
my hair grows slow but steady by
the moon's yellow light. 

twist tie 

we save the twist ties from
the bread to make a ladder to the moon.
they say the moon is made of cheese
but i know it to be a melon. honeydew. 
there's sweet flesh inside that, when you decompose,
a horse comes to feed you. i do not know
how to process the world falling apart. 
i have begun to question though if it was
ever together in the first place. there are
holes dug in the earth where children have dug
for weddings. as a child once i was a ring bearer 
or was i a flower girl? history is hard to make sense of
because what persists is not the facts but 
the emotions. i think when i was a child
that someone put me on a butcher table
& marked my body like a cow. the dotted lines 
like skipped stones in a valley of teeth. 
i saw a meme today that said,
"when i hear people say fall, i don't think
of autumn anymore." there used to be a fountain
where i played as a child. we went barefoot
& once a high school boyfriend spelled
"i love you" with the rocks. there are not
enough opportunities to be sickly sweet.
there are too many runaway trains. 
i catch one. i have nothing but a bag full of
twist ties. i have a dream of making
a house from them. weaving the plastic & metal
into something breathing & holy. 
a monster maybe. a creature with a hunger
as sharp as mine. i would sleep inside the beast.
let its lungs press against me. 
until then. i collect the ties in a little drawer.
measure our days in loaves of bread. 
the bread knife with teeth like an alligator gar,
takes me home. tells me to stop coveting the moon. 
we are not gone yet. 

elephant keeper

i have the sense that terrible news
happened last night but if i don't look at it
then i can just tend my elephant in peace.
no one knows i am an elephant keeper.
i assume i am not alone. someone of us 
are born with something gigantic 
that follows us asking to be fed. i named
the elephant when i was little but the name
no longer suites him so i just call him,
"elephant." sometimes, when i am feeling
particularly lonely, i will call him,
"sister." i have a suspicion that my brothers
have elephant too. i am getting to the age where
i am worrying about what will happen
when my parents die & the house is still there
full of all their skin. i saw my father's elephant once.
he keeps it in the garage. he sings to it. 
he used to sing to me. i was convinced he was 
john lennon when i was very small. thank goodness
he is not that would be upsetting. i have not
had the courage to ask my father, "will you sing
nowhere man to me?" but i crave it every night.
the news breaks a window. there is a lost elephant
weeping on the roof. maybe it is my partners.
in the end i am selfish about my creature. 
during college when i kept almost jumping
off the top of the building, i promised the elephant
i would deliver him to a zoo nearby. the lie stretched
until we talked about it but neither of us believed it. 
sometimes a fantasy is just a tool to keep going.
we could just never open the internet again. i could
for the first time ride the elephant. flaunt him 
& his massiveness. tell him to scream at the september sun. 
i hide him behind the oldest sycamore tree in our yard. i bring
him a loaf of banana bread & we eat together. 
do secrets keep us human or keep us from it?
i wish i could trade places with him. be the hidden
monster instead of the singing one. 

tick feast

let's get carried away. i drive into
the pennsylvania sticks & there are
five billboards begging for blood. 
i do not have much blood & so i keep going
until a sixth sign gets me. it says,
"without you we will have to 
become pizza shops." i too have had
to open my face up for drunk midnight boys. 
i give the blood. the ticks come in their
traffic uniforms. the forest is full
of ways to be eaten & ways to eat. 
mouths inside mouths. my tongue is
a jump rope in a song about leaving.
once i came home to find myself & my dogs
covered with ticks. i spent the next hour
on my knees, harvest them from our bodies.
some had feasted, were round like 
horror blackberries. the bite marks made
constellations on our bodies. big dipper 
little dipper. big bear. little bear. there is
a tick version of myself who only has to worried
about finding someone to eat. the moon
has a bite mark. i worry about lyme disease 
& that new illness that makes it so 
you cannot eat red meat. i have only 
seen headlines & there is too much information.
i do not want to know more. give me
all the hearsay. i am so tired that i barely
want the truth anymore. i want speculation. 
i heard there's another rapture date
coming up this week. of course it will pass
with so rapture but the last time
i remember people waiting i was in high school
& my friends & i were sitting in a park
pavilion eating peach rings & covered
with ticks. i used to try to live with 
as little blood as possible back then. in some ways
i still do. we do not grow up. we grow in. 
we hold our little bucket of river. 
the last tick i removed that day i lingered on.
watched him for a few moments while
he drank before removing him. a creek of blood
trickling down my calf. the deer came to drink.  

hot water

in the big-window apartment
we held seances for hot water.
once, in the middle of the plum
we bit down on the pit. you were bare.
i was reaching. i spoke into the faucet
like a telephone receiver. the landline 
in my parents' house was a portal.
i cradled the phone book & tried to find
my friends from school. sometimes though
i would just read names & houses.
numbers spilling from a hole in the wall. 
the apartment was awful but also home. 
our upstairs neighbors wept & fought often.
always worse when the hot water wasn't working.
sometimes i'd run the shower for thirty minutes
hoping that breath would come only to
give in to the cold shower. my bones 
wind-chiming in the rain. the ceiling 
in the bathroom leaked wildly. the building
clamored & shook. my childhood home 
rattled too only for different reasons. like,
it wanted another dog or there was no one
on the phone even though my grandmother
was talking. i have housed & been a house. 
we were not a family who took our shoes off
at the door. i thought it was strange to do so.
i loved to be an outdoor human. windows
& doors open. the hot water had to be summoned
there too. hands placed on the walls. 
a soft prayer. offerings of sunflower seeds 
& orphaned socks. the last week in that apartment
i dreamed of living in the shower. becoming
a fish. my roommates would have to buy a bowl
& cradle me into the bruise. i told them this
& they forbid me of it. i should not have told them
of my lush & selfish plans. i could be a beautiful
beta fish man right now. once during 
a cold shower i heard the neighbor above me
humming. or was it a ghost? i had been furious
at her for her late-night music & thunder feet. 
in that moment though we stood rain bound 
together. i found myself hoping her water
was hot & glorious.