several scheduled catastrophes

i knew this was going to be bad
when we walked on back of the heron
& you fed me fiddle heads. 
i tasted the songs you used to sing
to the dead snakes by the highway.
i have blocked off time on my calendar 
to cry. i have scheduled an email
to myself that reads, "forget."
you can tell the body to do an action
but that doesn't mean the feeling
won't have a life of it's own.
i still have the feeling that i missed out
on kissing a body made of fire
in high school. he played bass & sometimes
we would message into the night
about jupiter. he said, "i am so hungry."
i said, "i know where we can sneak
into the vineyard to eat grapes."
we never did but i went alone
& swallowed each fruit thinking
of his eyes. thinking of the heron & 
imagining a boy just like you. 
i knew i was going to have to throw out
all of my clothes. i knew there would be
no time for sleep. instead, i had funerals
for everyone i ever wanted. 
made room to be consumed. 
shaved my head in a black mirror.
in college i often took naps 
for strange amounts of time like
twenty-seven minutes or twelve minutes.
every rest counted. i do that same 
but with mania. "i am allowed to be
a colony of ants for the next 
eighty seconds," i tell myself. 
then it is an hour. then it is a life time.
the truth is there is no vineyard. 
it is just your face. these were just
your eyes. you said, "go ahead"
& i knew you meant, 
"i only have thirty more seconds
before we're both smoke." 

chainsaw carving

give me the history knife
alive with the scent of pine 
& bruises. i take a chunk of my liver
to all the artists that i know
hoping one will have a chainsaw 
lying around. hoping one
is a man with a pile of teeth beneath
his bed. the question of 
"who has shaped you?"
is both abundant & terrifying.
i think of becoming a closet
of sock puppets. here are all
the animals i have eaten 
in a jury to decide what kind of creature
is going to be carved out of my wood. 
they chant "ant hill" & i decide
a colony could suite me. it sounds
like a relief to be so many pieces
to blame. a buck stands on the ceiling.
a brother in the garbage disposal.
i have jars full of noises i no longer
allow to escape my throat. 
bird call. yell. scream. cough.
once i screamed & my dad became
a chainsaw. i saw him spin.
who has shaped you? who has
carved you with an audience?
who has said, "i'm so sorry"
as if the machine were not in his hand?
i want to tell you something different though.
once i was dead & so were all
the magnolia trees. then, there was
a mourning dove. he held a pairing knife.
cut my eyelids off & said,
"look at all the pink." i did.
i stared into the pink & the pink
stared back. i said, "i am not sorry."
the bird said, "i do not want you to be."

insecticide 

you have to reach the nest
if you want it to stop.
last spring i was plagued 
with ants. they crawled on all the walls
of my bedroom. they sang songs
about the sweetness they wanted
to devour from my irises:
little black berries. they carried 
pieces of my childhood & dropped them
onto the floor. a guitar pick.
a watermelon rind. you have to feed them
by hand. lie to them. say,
"let's eat together." sugar & poison.
at night i would spray all the corners
with insecticide. it smelled vaguely
like lemons. still, pulled by some
other worldly force, the ants
would march & march. they'd follow
the one before them right into 
pools of death. chemicals that 
turned them inside out. they'd writhe 
& i'd tell them, "i am sorry."
but it was an empty "i am sorry"
because i did not stop. instead,
i did more. i left traps outside.
by the growing crack in the house's spine.
then, as they still came, i'd plead,
"please. i have nothing for you here.
i have barely enough for my self."
i felt my life unraveling in every possible way.
my partner turning into 
a closet & then saying, "let's be
obelisks instead." the crack 
in the house's foundation leaking
during the season's first heavy rain.
in so many ways i lived just like the ants.
i walked through poison
in search of one little bite of sugar.
"how do we stop ourselves?"
i asked them. to which they did not reply. 

dog night

i wrestle a planet from his mouth.
slobber & all. i say, "i too want to eat
the light from the sky."
the bible is wrong about everything
but mostly creation.
in the first days of the world
there was nothing but dogs. the dogs ran
& the dogs swam. the dogs sought
love poems in the fields &
thus they created all the animals 
they could not capture. birds 
& rodents & even moths. that is
what they determined love meant.
to chase & almost swallow. my dog 
is like me. he craves the darkness
the world used to swell with.
he broke out the window
on the second floor. used tree branches
to ascend into the sky. i followed. i remembered 
doing the same when i was a teenager
& spent all my nights on all fours 
trying to run the static
out of my bones. i hold him close.
he writhes. hunger is a process
of losing yourself to a need. 
he begs. "i need to chew 
on a god." i tell him what he already knows.
"that is us, you know there is 
only us." 

my neighbor is making a fish in his yard

he owns a little plot of heaven land.
the other ghosts who smoke
on their windowsills & tether clotheslines 
to the walls of their apartments. 
the house with a half in its number 
was a place of angels & genesis. 
i watched fish crawl from the basement 
with their first legs. frogs whose eyes
blinked from the sink. it was worst
when we were snowed in for two weeks.
i saw my neighbor in his tiny sky yard.
he hunched over & brought bucket
after bucket of grease from his house.
formed the fish from feathers & wire.
it breathed like a thunder storm. 
i watched as it stalked the edges of his fence.
white pouring from the slit-throat sky.
i was terrified of his creation just like i was
terrified of the couple who fought long
into the night & the man who sold guns
off the front porch. once i cut his hair
& in the process i saw all kinds of fish
in his scalp. he asked, "what is wrong?"
& i said, "nothing." people react
in all different kinds of ways
when they are discovered. i always wanted
to be discovered but not like a hostage.
i wanted the fish to see me. 
swallow me like jonah. listen 
to my prophecies. when the snow melted 
all that was left were the bones.
damp cigarette butts on the sidewalk. 
a dead man on the roof or 
was he a fish? 

profile pics

the room we made where no one
had a tongue. i page through 
my window as if it were a book.
give your selfhood a name. a hopscotch.
kiss the frogs you keep in your sink.
when i look at how the shape of my face
turns from a cantaloupe into 
a pomegranate over time i am frightened. 
did you know people have funerals
for themselves? gather their friends
& bury everything in the yard.
i watch a video about assisted death.
take a shovel to the wall & go at it until
you stop me. tie me up into a knot of pears. 
we are all the longest stop motion films.
pose & move & pose & move. i have 
cut off all my hair & watched
as each strand slithered away. became 
centipedes & bows. i page all the way back
until i was thirteen. my hair in front
of my face. my fat like mountains.
come & get me, is what my face says.
living inside the space where a story
used to be. do you remember when
you were on a postage stamp? 
all the rooms you traveled to? 
loose teeth. uneven black winged liner. 
measuring steps between each picture.
miles between my town & the town
where i was born & the planet 
where everyone has birds living 
in their eye sockets. don't get me wrong.
i love to turn back time. just not 
when it's me. just not when each 
little ghost is still there in a room
too small for her teeth. chewing 
on the sentence she said before 
she was a footprint & the blue mud. 

juniper

there is nothing really left to burn.
in my dream a juniper tree grows
inside the closet. i do not tell you
about my secret ghost. i arrive there
only when you are in the yard or
when you are washing your face
in the bathroom. i tell the tree
everything i am too afraid to tell you.
once, a teacher told me that 
when you write a story no two characters
should love each other the same.
one should always love the other more.
i have never been able to make peace
with this reality. i find branches
to burn. i pluck an eyelash out 
& use it as the wick in a candle.
i am unsure what is the dream
& what are my night worlds.
the juniper tree talks in the baby voice
of a kite. air beneath her tongue.
she says that if i leave the closet door open
she would be happy to take over our bedroom.
fill the floor with berries & needles.
so much smoke to be made. so much ash.
i know very little about cleansing
though once i spit up a dove
after eating the largest meal 
of my life. i am always trying 
to rid myself of something. does anyone
live whole? when i see a stained glass window
i always want to live there. fragments
glued in place & legible. 
i burn the juniper in the morning
when no one else is awake but the cats.
they asked me if my tongue
is also made of wood. they laugh.
it is a joke i do not understand. 
the dream ends & there is nothing 
left to burn. i chop off my tongue
& find it is true. it is made of wood.
you return. you ask me where 
i have been. i pull my eyes out like drain stoppers.
spill onto the floor. you say,
"where are you?" but i am right here. 

leather jacket

i open the closet to find a cow standing there.
she has eyes like stop lights. chews on the red leather jacket
we got from the family thrift on mcauthur road. 
she doesn't like excuses. she asks,
"have you ever been a drum?"
i often think about the lives my clothes lived
before i've worn them. there are the three sweaters
from a dead man. the dress worn by
a girl now on fire. the teeth from a squirrel 
who is now nothing but ribs. i love 
to be my own little frankenstein. the resurrection
of everyone's gender trouble.  
i take a walk with the cow. she talks about 
wanting so badly to wear a suit & look dapper.
i tell her we all want to wear a suit 
but none of them fit. she remembers 
the cow the leather was made from. the days
he would spend eating dandelions 
& learning their stories of the times
of glass & green. the leather jacket is your favorite.
i try to think of how when i get home
i will explain to you, my lover, where
your jacket went & how it is not my fault.
sometimes you wear my clothes & 
at first i felt a twinge of greed. "that is mine."
now, i think of it like sharing skin. like stepping
into each other's breath. once
i saw someone walking around in a dress
i used to own. i had dropped it off
at the goodwill just one day before.
i thought "that is me." i'm not sure
if i was talking about the dress or the girl.
the cow disappears back into the closet.
there's no more jacket. just a zipper. 
i hang the zipper on its coat hanger. 
the closet smells like damp grass. 
i take off all my clothes. including my skin.
become a cow in the shower. 
then, feeling daring or lonely, i put on one of 
your dresses only for a minute before changing. 

motion sickness

i want to be a body in motion. 
as a child i would turn inside out
each year on the way to the photo album. 
my parents would try & try
to turn me right-ways. some years they left me
in the dark on the side of the road.
frustrated, they said, "find your own way
to the button jar." i did. i always did.
hitchhiking with vampires & sometimes 
scooped up by a red tail hawk.
once i was there, i would put on my 
opera glasses to try to see everyone 
from as far away as i was. distance is 
sometimes not a matter of physical bodies
but how far your words are from one another.
i still keep a megaphone in case
i want to tell them "i love you." i always
prefer to drive the car if there is a choice.
if not, i am likely to become a potted violet
by the time we arrive to the shovel 
in the earth. the only real way to calm it
is to stare out the window. leave it
open a crack. i picture myself
like jonah in the mouth of the whale
except i don't let my self be swallowed.
take pride in the ways i am not a man
& fear in all the ways i am. bent over
as cars rush by on the highway.
i spit up every moon i've ever seen.
"we should leave you at home," my dad
or my mom or maybe just a wandering
cruel angel say to me. even at home though
there are days i get sick. i imagine stillness
as a state in which nothing gets set on fire.
i want to be still like bread 
or like bone. tell me though, what do you do
with your inside skin? i like to feel
the water. lay down in a creek. it is always
christmas eve in my stomach. 
tomorrow everyone's tongues 
come with a bow. 

stray melon moon

one summer we tried to grow planets
in the yard behind the garage.
they all got sick with cow spots.
i would wake up to the sounds
of them moo-ing long into the night.
their calls would shift & begin
to sound like men. i had a trowel 
& a pair of gardening gloves.
i went out to stroke them. tell them
to go to sleep. they never listened
& we stayed up together.
told stories of our old bodies.
there, sleepless, i could feel a life
when i once had feathers & another
where i walked with heavy hooves.
only one planet survived & i was small.
just the size of my fist. a melon moon.
green & full of humming birds.
i told no one about it. i let my family think
all the crops had died. cradled 
the little secret. it pleaded with me.
"let me go sit with the stars." i was selfish.
i didn't want to be alone. so, instead,
i took a cleaver & severed the moon in half.
let the nectar spill. inside there stood
a tiny cow. one with rubies for eyes.
i panicked at such a discovery. no one
else could know. i licked my fingers.
the juice had tasted sweet & floral. 
i buried the cow beneath a crooked field tree
between rows of stitched corn. 
i am still afraid to go out at night. i'm afriad
the cow has grown old & vengeful.
i am afraid i will look up in the sky
& see the melon anyway. i would be
so jealous. i would want to climb up there,
knife in my mouth, searching for 
just one more taste.