water mark

i realized i have a watermark 
on my face. in every picture i show up
as a gender instead of an organism.
today someone called me a "beautiful lady"
which felt like a shawl draped over
my shoulders in the middle of august. 
i am always too hot & always too cold.
i drive my partner mad when i switch
the car ac on & off as we drive to 
a red pin pushed into the dirt. if i could
i would sleep for a whole year. no no 
not a coma i mean like really sleep. 
get so deep in a dream that it becomes
a video game. when we first started  dating
we wanted to do everything together.
i bought a video game consol we never used
with money we didn't have. when i was younger
i would try to scrub the watermark off.
i bought bleach & steel wool. my partner admits 
he once used sandpaper on his skin. 
a tiktok i saw recently showed lizard owners
helping lizards get out of their dead skin.
i thought, "i hope that's what the lizard wants."
if i shed my skin like that i would
probably keep it & hang it up in the closet.
i do experiments to see how & when 
the face recognition ghosts can see or not see me
in my little phone. the watermark is not my fault
or is it? i guess it's possible it's not there at all.
no one talks about it. maybe it's just not polite. 

sorry i got distracted looking on my phone. i have
no attention span anymore. did you know
that the word "tragedy" comes from two words
meaning "goats" & "singing"? dear god
so much is lost in translation. what if i never
get to have a really good cry again? what if 
the technology gets so good that the watermark
is thought of as beautiful? & to think i was once
a water creature. i could have stayed damn it
& maybe floated along in the climate soup. 
instead i have all the mirror-staring & a bag
full of videos tapes i made of myself when i was
a child. pictures of the early 2000s are starting
to look sepia tone & old. back in the day we 
had our tragedies out in the cornfield 
instead of on our faces. the trees & balling up
their fists with the last fruits of the year.
i am never a woman but sometimes i am in 
someone else's mouth. i have come to love
the irony of being always in drag. the intention
lost in whatever hungry i wake up with.
i want to be beautiful. i want to be gaudy
& goth & somehow still knowable.  

confessions of a bad drummer

i start a rock band inside the telephone.
call a girl with half my name.
we sit in the graveyard without heads.
the man with the hook for a hand gazes
longingly at our teeth. i buy a mannequin 
& pretend she is my prom date. my real 
prom date smells like grease & shoes.
i am lying, he doesn't show up. he is 
where my head is. a close lamp. tongue pulled
for the brief light. we keep the drums in 
the attic. i go up there to pretend to be
cool. i don't know how to drum & every time
my dad tries to show me how, they demolish
another old house that's falling apart. 
i accept that the town cannot handle
more of my hands. i explain to a friend
that until last year i moved at least once
a year since i was eighteen. room after room.
each space like a rosary bead. holy thumb
over a smooth surface. i have been trying 
to name the decades of my life. the horrible
mysteries. the lustful mysteries. 
the wandering mysteries. i catch a drumstick
at a show i did not actually attend.
i carry it around like a spare rib. smash the stick
against the cymbal moon. build a blanket fort
from microphone stands & sheets.  sleep there
until i'm old enough to run away for more
than just a few hours. instead of practicing 
i put my energy into daydreams. i get on
a tour bus. i play sold-out shows without
any music. my neighbor above me has
a drumset made of children. mine is made now
of book & a tape recording of my father
singing to practice for a mass he will not attend.
i cannot be trusted to keep a beat. instead,
i am the butter house with a skylight. 
when given the chance, i always let the stars in. 

the eagle beak & other myths 

i am a connoisseur of misinformations. 
inside each is a truth. this week my favorite
is the eagle beak myth which is the idea
that in their old age eagles fly to the top
of the mountain & scrape their beaks & talons off
to grow new ones. don't we all want to know
that rebirth is just one wound away?
in facebook swamps, people post low-quality 
images of eagles with a caption about their 
false journeys & their beakless faces. the beak
is not a separate part though. it is, like a jaw
sewn into the eagle's face. this is a myth
about immortality. the comments are full
of believers. they praise the eagle. they say,
"nature knows all" & "god is great."
i saw an eagle only twice in my life.
once, i was a girl & he was lost. he was
truly beakless. his feathers were ragged & he sat
on a log in the middle of the forest near my house. 
i could tell he was old or maybe sick. i wondered where
eagles go to die. did they have burials or did they
plummet from the sky? i tried to bring people there 
to help him. was it my father? my uncle?
when we returned, the creature was gone.
i wonder why the believers invented this story about
the eagle when there is already so much to learn
from them. their eyes, like visiting suns. 
the second time was on a mountain. wind cut
across the ridges. the bird was far away,
gliding perfectly. proud beaked & huge.
you cannot skip death. rebirth is a cut seam 
in the teeth of the moon. all the water pouring out
like a pitcher mouth. the feathers, falling 
as postcards. what if we will never be new again? 
the second eagle told me,
"even if i could, i would not let go of my beak."

  

chipped plates

i do not want to be a more careful person.
in the house with only one window
i kept just a single plate. it was plastic 
& i yearned to break it. once in that lonely
hallway. i dropped a drinking glass 
& spent the next week plucking the slivers 
from the hardwood floor. if i was more careful
i would not have become as intimate 
with the baseboard or the halos. as a child 
i was a fracture expert. i broke wine glasses
& the big clumsy dinner plates. in our yard
we have a graveyard where i take the shards.
press them into the earth. sometimes they grow
trees of cups & spoons. in the autumn they ripen
& smash on the ground. there are people
who walk around without breaking anything.
i am the china shop inside the bull. the impending 
broken tooth. i am not wholly against kintsugi
but it it does not come naturally to me.
i smash houses. i smash years. once i broke
a whole city. i'm embarassed at just
how comfortable i am with my own faults.
i think, "yes, of course the floor is covered
in glass" & "yes of course the smoke alarm
is singing from a hymnal." my favorite plates
are the ones with chips in them. survivors
of a fall. places where an angel has feasted 
on the ceramic or the percaline or the glass
or the clay. i find marks on myself like that.
my father tells a story where i was dropped
from the roof of the house as a baby & somehow
did not shatter. there is a chip on my back 
to prove it. sometimes though i search 
for that piece. wonder what it would mean 
to place it back on the third step of my spine. 
is there a point when can just decide i am whole?
not because of the absence but in spite of it?

quiet game

i love a cigar box to put my spare tongues in. 
shiny little sarcophagus. i should stop
letting this app track my location.
i want to reject nihilism & embrace a thing
with feathers. there is a zoo up the street 
from me & i wish the cages were bigger.
what a ridiculous dream? that's what everyone
has been saying to me though, "don't you want
a bigger cage?" no i do not. i want a meadow. 
there used to be horses at the zoo but last time i visited
only one was left. sometimes i feel like
a horse at the end of the world. i have never
been good at a quiet game. instead, i start
speaking all the cicada things i've been
told over the night. i make a blanket fort
& demand that the stars are popcorn.
the premise of the game is that whoever
can stay quiet the longest wins. what a terrible
lesson of silence. so many religions are predicated 
on waiting. a likely alibi for the void.
he has not come yet. he is not coming. he will
only come if we make him. i am sick of god
being "him." i think god is the sun or maybe
on occasion the rain. i want to lose 
every single quiet game. i have an attack 
full of tongues. i dust them off
to find new pitches to scream. let's not get
comfortable with canned mushrooms. let's not
forget that the soil is full of toes. on my 
favorite nights i wear all the tongues at once.
i lose over & over. we are driving home
from a fire in the fire world. a politician is starting
the game. i hear the sound being pulled 
from the whole city. i refuse. we drive the car
like a video game. we sing. 

sharks at the local pool

i used to go to the pool to visit them.
the sharks with their mouths full of pairing knives. 
they lived in the diving well. that deep blue.
when i was smaller i feared them.
saw their faces in the dark. then, one day
when i was lonely & the summer was invincible,
i dived down as deep as i could. i thought maybe
i could swim far enough to emerge in 
an easier life. instead, i found myself
among them. i learned to speak shark
which mostly just involves hiding your tongue
so that it doesn't get severed by your teeth.
they taught me about water. asked me how
i planned to grow gills. above there were shirtless boys
playing barefoot basketball & girls laying
on their towels. gender does not wash off
no matter how much chlorine you swallow.
the sharks did not ask me if i was a boy
or a girl, instead they asked me, "who do you
call home?" i did not have an answer. i talked
about my brother though. they begged me
to bring him. i never did though. i wanted the sharks
all to myself. of course, without gills,
i could never stay. gasping at the surface 
& swimming to the ladder. the lifeguard 
did not know there were sharks & neither did
the adult swimmer or even most of 
the other children. once & only once did 
a little girl ask me, "do you stay down there
to talk to the sharks?" i answered, "what sharks?" 
though i wish i could go back & tell her,
"yes, i do. they hear me." 

echo hunting

i have eaten my own tail more than once.
i set out with a butterfly net & my fingers.
broken mirrors just to wrack up the bad luck. 
the night is full of who i used to be. 
have you ever screamed into a hole
in the wall only for the scream to turn
into a lover? i have. there he was on the ceiling.
there he was asking, "are you still awake?"
everyone on grindr is echo hunting. everyone
at the corner store is echo hunting. everyone at
the park fountain has caught & echo once
just to let it scamper away. i don't spend
much time with my own reflection. i am not
self-hating (anymore) i am just aware that
there is a point of departure where the body
becomes a text & not the flesh that move me.
i watch a tiktok where the speaker says,
"some people will never know the relief
of finding out a mass shooter is not like them."
i scroll before i learn what she means.
the sun is a bead in the neck of someone else's 
constellation. i have succeeded only twice.
pinched my own tongue as i slipped away.
in my parent's house there is a bin of 
skins i shed as a kid. my mother refuses
to throw them away. she says, "what if you 
need them?" we get rid of too much. we don't
get rid of enough. i hum into a fist. 
hold the fist tight. if i don't let go that voice
will be all mine. when i let it go 
there is a button quail in my hand. 
the second time was the most harrowing.
i was a child running in a house of bones.
i rounded a corner & caught myself by accident.
there i was as tall as the ceiling with teeth made
of light switches. i did not run. i did not
even scream. into i turned all them one.
me, a little light pillar in the rib-heavy house. 

opening the windows 

you should at least once a winter
open all the windows of the house.
let the old ghosts out & the new
ghosts in. i am not ready for the cold
but i am i child i cycles. all my homes
have had thin walls by which 
i mean the birds fly right through us.
pigeons & geese & once a flock
of bats heading toward the moon.
i have a bad habit of locking myself in.
in one apartment i nailed my window shut.
the next, i bought two sets of curtains.
i cocoon somewhere between stubborn
& survive. i don't know what will
& won't hurt me anymore so i pill bug.
my skin is tissue paper used to wrap
a vase. i find a glass man in the yard.
he is a patron of the through people.
a sewing thread around my ankle.
soon we will light the hearth again. 
feed it my own glass teeth & watch them
melt. tiny portals. the feathers the birds
leave behind. when i shut each window
one at a time i hear the fresh spirits
taking off their shoes. washing their faces
in the bath after a long trip
through the sycamore branches
& the corn drying in the fields. 

cheeseboard

i like my meat like i like my cheese;
i want it to look as if it never knew
how to run across the earth. square. circle. shred.
in the u.s., death 
is not knife or even bolt through skull. 
instead, it is the way the slices are arranged.
perfect rows. before famine, we knew
only berries. our eyes plucked 
from a pudding night. they used
to have picnics by the battlefield. 
butterknife. bree. bone. 
we are not the only animal who kills 
but we are the only animal that holds
executions. who stacks crackers & cheese
& wipes crumbs from our laps. 
they will tell you to pray when 
you should be moving. running into
a meadow & hiding in the grass. i do not
really eat cheese but i love a cheese board.
maybe it is the brief semblance of order.
it seems to say, "now we are a holiday."
the television becomes smaller & smaller
until it lives in our blood. we watch
another documentary about
the kennedy assassination. it should
not be a mystery. in the u.s., all bullets
are magic. they say in the mouth 
of the right queer they become 
a seed. i have seen a cherry tree grow
from the face of a deer. i have seen
someone jump from a bridge & become
a heron. i make a cheese board just
to look at it. not to eat. take a picture.
sit outside with it. take it to the doctor
with me. then, finally, go to the park
& let the other wiser animals have at it. 

she shells 

in the night i get afflicted with
a carapace. the suitcase in the brain.
we make the gnarled promises 
without any air. i build you a treehouse 
& somehow the ocean finds it. i have shells
from so many beaches but none 
that fit me anymore. sometimes i get bleak
& consider giving in to a scammer 
who is calling & asking for my social security.
i mean, don't we all deserve a win sometimes?
once my boyfriend (derogatory) & i drove
to centralia. its a city that is 
always burning. a few people live there
selling coal from the backs of their trucks.
he bought a piece for me & i put it in my mouth
when he wasn't looking. we can try all we want
but we cannot swallow what we've
gotten ourselves into. one of the coal had
pennies attached to it. now he's married (derogatory).
it takes strength to hold a grudge. i am not
into the saintly stuff anymore. forgiveness is for
the ocean, i am just a little creature trying
to be shiny & free. i go to new jersey with 
my new new new boyfriend. we are running out
of time to be honeymooning. soon we'll have
to be real. soon we'll have to start burning.
i find a really nice shell. i meany really really nice.
it's so nice i get a conspiracy in my head that
someone is stocking the beach with these
smooth treasures. i avoid googling it.
it is nice to avoid an answer every once 
in awhile. i fill my pockets. i fill my face.
we leave with bags of shells. i try each one on.
none of them fit but i keep them anyway.
you never know what your gender is 
going to end up doing. i might be a coal fire
burning one day. put on my last pair of heels.
the ones i used to make money with. 
call my ex-boyfriend & ask him,
"would you like to buy some shells?"
just so i can feast on his brief confusion.
revenge everything i've ever wanted it to be.
i run my thumb along the inside of the shell
where the animal used to sleep.