mandrake

we would go out in the yard 
burying microphones. the talk
of worms & mandrakes.
they would say things like,
"buy one get one free." tongues
from the plastic water. a little flute
in the sky saying, "you are not
you are not you are not."
once i fell in love with a soil person.
he reached up only a hand from the earth.
pointed upwards. there was the piano falling
it was too late. when you are starving
even a radio is an oasis. sometimes
i would pretend i was a host too.
"up next is a terrible rain." the mandrakes 
are always telling lies about the worms.
the worms insist that they are beautiful.
pocket mirrors. a collection basket
full of mice. is it enough to talk to an angel? 
is it enough to see the figure
of a man in a mandrake or are we just
too pastel-thumbed. blurring the lines
between ghost & girl. between horizon 
& a deadly cliffside. the view is everything.
the sky bleeds from a tiny slit
in its side. sticky jam red. orange bruise.
i pluck the mandrake 
from the soil & he scrambles to cover
his unmentionables. my heart breaks 
as it should. i clothe him in a doll dress.  
put him in a bassinette. he asks,
"were you ever a mandrake?" i tell him
i was not but once a whole tree
grew from my head overnight.
i had to find a lover to chop it does
but it still sways. the phantom limb.
songbirds come to me in search
of the branches. 

parking lot burial 

she asks me, "what are you doing
to yourself?" i get in the car
& drive & drive until i reach the parking lot.
there are sea gulls
who come here just to die.
they watch television on their backs.
make vlogs about the garbage they find
in the dumpster behind the stop & shop.
i come here too on a night in the winter
looking for somewhere to hide
all my feathers. they keep spilling
from my mouth & i can't ever conceal them.
i thought i could make a person
for her to love. i hear waves even though
there's a highway between here & the beach.
the ocean has always been just
a mania away for me. i remember 
parking my car in jersey once just
to look for jellyfish, i found none
but i did find a funeral the gulls were having.
in my religion, a parking lot is always
a holy space. a shrine to longing.
& waiting. a stolen mouth. elegy for 
the meadows that used to bloom 
& their ghosts 
who still search in the broken glass
for the color blue. i cannot go home.
my gutted place. plastic drawers
full of everything i want to be. 
i always join a gull funeral when i see one.
say a few words, "i'm sure 
he cut the sky like butter."
the birds chatter. i tear a button 
from my jacket to leave as an offering. 
they birds disperse & only i remain.
a little knot in the ground 
where, in the summer, dandelions
punched their way through the asphalt. 
i know she is waiting for me by the window
with a bowl full of all my feathers i left. 

husband poem

i am a widow in the sense that
i have cut my hair & buried it
with my husband. sometimes it rises
from the grave to ask for lollipops.
we are all just sugar spirits.
child-fingered & goat-hearted. 
i reach for a jar swarmed by ants.
he used to stand on the ceiling
& tell me how he wanted to be worshipped.
i made lemon fish & fist-stuffed chicken. 
when my hair is furious 
it will look for him. he is no longer
my husband. instead, he is a man 
with a radio for a mouth. his birthday
is knit into my calendar. i tell him,
"this is not your face" when i lift
a potato from the dirt & find him screaming.
i used to think i could grow my hair
long enough to please him. 
horse bridle. wedding bridal. 
the sour peaches the trees grew for us.
each of them, our children. i filled my pockets.
felt their soft infant hair. 
i entombed them with my hair
where they will always be dragons.
sometimes i see myself 
as a living sever. where the world was
cut into another continent.
i run away from everything i can
but especially men. especially husbands.
keep what i must. 
i still have keys to their houses.
spoons stolen from the their cabinets.
what's ours is ours. my hair. 
my heaven. your pit. 

man with scissors 

he says, "i'll cut the pear in half"
& he's talking about my head.
where do you carry your softness 
so that it doesn't go trampoline?
i hold my breath in the grocery store. i hold
my breath. i punch a hole through
a wall in the hope that there's honey inside.
there's not. or at least there hasn't been
for a long time. just pictures of fires.
black & white pictures. they could be
just very nice silk
i try to burry each finger on a different planet
so that wherever i end up evacuating to
i will have a memory of touch
that i can return to. berry tree. berry blood.
the astronauts feast & them i am just
a boiling without any hands. will you take me
away from my self? i need a little break
from skin. i just want to be the fur.
the nice fur of all the woodchucks 
who live by the side of the river.
if i were a toad, i would try to be
the biggest one there ever was. the thing
about men & scissors is they will always
find something you can lose
& they will convince you that you
are alright without it. i crave the pears.
their pale sugar. their bruisy faces.
do you want a piece of me? i do as well.
one bite in the cool dark 
of a morning. perched on a rock
by the stream. the man has never once
even severed a lock of hair from himself. 
the television sends a warning
that i do not bother heeding. 
plum juice is gone anyway. we'll need
to live off comets soon. please tell me
there will be pear trees there.
it does not need to be true. i have 
my own pair of scissors 
if i need to use them. 

backwards car

he says, "this will be okay" while
pressing his foot to the gas.
the world unwinds & i don't know
if i want to have a body anymore.
my blood like oil feeding a little machine. 
i always take things too far.
picture us married with eight children.
a house with too many windows. 
pot boiling on my forehead. 
everyone in the world is watching our date.
we are both almost sixteen. 
i have already turned into a crow
several times & he has told me
the same story about his mother
killing basil plants for fun.
in the parking lot i admit, "i don't know
how to say your last name." he says it
& i follow the shapes of his mouth.
i never get it right. 
it is such a shame we have
to meet each other like this,
so hungry. in the pizza shop
he orders for me. white pizza. 
i try to explain how & why my feet
don't always touch the ground.
he asks, "are you ghost?"
& i can't answer. 
he says he wishes he wasn't a triplet.
we drive backwards all the way
to a creek. past houses & cars,
all of them shouting & saying,
"you are going to hurt someone."
why don't i tell him to stop? why don't
i say "i don't think i want to 
try to love you." instead, i tell him
the opposite. i say, "when can
we meet again?" he promises to unwind 
the sky for me. he promises 
he will cut down trees to see me.
chew up the moon & spit it out.
alone afterwards, i walk backwards 
for the rest of the day. embarassed,
i lay on the floor of my bedroom.
turn into a crow again only now
without embarrassment. 
wild & feathered. i worried love was always
going to be about undoing yourself. 

bird radio

i think we should start packing our bags.
on the television they're talking
about war like it's candy. i turn on the radio
& all there is are blue jays yelling about the seed.
they say, "all we are is jupiter to you, aren't we?"
i've never run far enough away but that's 
what it means to live in the united states.
it's a labyrinth in a labyrinth. sometimes 
you will pull over on the side of the road
& your father will pull over too. you didn't know
he was following you. i know to pack light.
just the telephones & maybe the good knife.
clothes are everywhere. in little bond fires
on the side of the road. we change the radio
to a station of loons. it is calming the way
they speak like fog. like a breath that
consumes you in the morning dark.
i put a dream in the microwave & it comes out
covered in ants. i have enough sugar 
but not enough anything else. i used to think
we had enough heart to tend a fig tree. 
i will spare you a metaphor about the wasps.
if you don't know what i'm talking about,
please google it. but the fruit was always
just a waiting bell. the delivery person
asking to come inside, saying,
"i do not want to run anymore." 
we let them crash on the sofa but quickly
they become a happy meal. you take
what you can get. fries with the state lines.
a jump rope used as a choker. 
my favorite station is the song birds of course.
most of the time when you flick it on,
they are too shy to sing but sometimes
when the world is just right, you will hear them
sing about a before time that does not exist.
tell me this will all fit in a suite case
when we have to run. the birds & all.
the trembling & all. i accidentally turn on crows.
cover my ears. they always speak the truth.
i do not want the truth tonight. 
i just want you to tell me there is a future
in which we do not have to escape.  

self-portrait as a fly trap

i have been so hungry i grew teeth on my hands.
come & feed me your shoes. marvel at how
the carnivore can collect any of us. 
the ravenous flower who ran into
a field of knives to become a new gender.
the ants tell stories of me. they say,
"not all green is home." i learned everything i know
from him. from how he killed his violets
& how he worshiped burn piles 
out behind his parent's blue house.  
he bought me a bouquet of myself. i fed it
the house flies & flour moths. i let the mouths
burst from every wall of my bedroom. 
then my skin. i tended myself. hunted
by the porch light. told no one what i ate.
everyone else with their feet in the dirt.
drinking yolky sun. 
me, the little starvation waiting for a footstep.
i was always ready to close my jaws.
to lock the door. to let the phone ring until
it stopped. dear god what it takes
to admit, "i am a fisherman." 
a fly lands & i tell her, "do not be scared."
close around her. she is me. 
she is a little communion dress. 
hands raised like eucharist. i eat her face first
so she doesn't have to see. 

flytrap to fly 

this is how i write a love poem with my teeth. 
there was a flower once
that we both resembled.
your wings are little pocketbooks.
coins you placed on the counter.
i am here to be the gone machine. 
to be the sofa you do not stand up from.
television still laughing in the background. 
i open my mouth & sing to you
about the soil. we both once slept there
as freckles of words. do you know
what it feels like to hold 
a colony in your jaws? someday you will.
that is what i have learned 
from the windowsill. that today 
i am the one with a mouth 
but tomorrow you will be the bird
who hits the glass or you will be 
the animal with eyes made of gold.
come here & let us speak softly 
to one another. you can tell me 
what you want to see in the clouds
& i will knit them for you. you can confess
all your regrets here. i will swallow them
along with your wings. hold them
in my throat & wait for them
to turn into sugar. 

shoes by the door

let's kick down the barefoot door.
i have nothing for running,
just a kite made of house flies.
i crouch & treat each shoe like 
the animal it is. hungry for a mouthful
of stones. i collect doorways
in a little photo album beneath 
the floorboards. the shoes wake up 
at night & i have to come & teach them
homosexuality again. tongues of fire.
a television the size of my palm 
which i carry from room to room
like a candle. i let the shoes out
so that they can frolic. i ask them,
"can you just promise to come back?"
they don't always. sometimes
they get eaten by wandering bicycles.
i try so hard to cram my body
into sepulchers. it gets loose.
the shoes demand flesh. crave a warning.
i put them to sleep. two by two.
a party for an arch. the storm is coming
& they say the water will rise up
to our knees. for now though
we are married just like we wanted to be.
the door is locked & the shoes
are done kicking. i feed them each
a little beetle. they are greedy & 
try to swallow my hands too.  
i almost let them. i want to know
what is is they're yearning to make from me. 

at the saver's in hempstead 

we try on genders that used to 
belong to someone else. crooked mirror.
floral prints that yield fields of pilled winter hats. 
i forget where we said we were going.
the parking lot is a crushed can heaven. 
pigeons take turns guessing 
what each person who arrives 
is searching for. in the wracks of clothing
i'm looking for you. i'm looking for 
us on the night we met & decided 
to pursue a future as statues.
i told you, "my gender doesn't have legs"
& you said, "neither does mine."
the red tags mean no one wants 
to pretend this gender is worth something anymore.
i pick up my hunger & put it back down.
the sun is setting early. winter has 
a trash bag full of bones. opens it & offers
for us to sleep there for the night.
you buy shoes that don't fit & i buy
a button-up i'll never actually wear.
you ask me three times, "what do you think of them?"
as you lift the fake snakeskin shoes
as if they are little coffins. i tell you,
"they look perfect" when really i am thinking
of cradling farewell pigeons in them.
in the driveway you accuse me of trying
to be something that i'm not. 
i deflect it because i know it's true.
i want to ask you if you think
we are always trying to live inside someone else's clothes
or if someday we'll arrive & move like minnow do.
like we're slipping through ourselves.
i regret my purchases &, when you are asleep,
i throw out the button-up in a panic.
push it to the bottom of the trash can
so you won't see. stand there as if this is
a little funeral. the stars have all their fishing rods
out to tonight. i miss you. i miss myself.
i miss the way we once
broke our skin like bread.