guitar strings across a doorway

make me your instrument of sinew
& wood. i want to be where
your callouses come from. i used to play 
an out-of-tune guitar 
for an audience of teeth & boyfriends.
often i will walk through a door
& hear everything plucked.
i could never hold the pick just right
so instead i moved my fingers 
like little rats. every room is
the string belly of another time.
fill my hull with coins & tightening. 
what i crave is for the melody to fall down
& all of us to let out in the snap 
this is what we're waiting for. have you ever broken 
a guitar for an audience? which is 
to ask, have you ever had a room watch
while you turned yourself
into performance? there are doctors 
who have sugary drops of my life
beneath their tongues. boys 
who carried me like a bowl of oranges
to the river where everything
is made of strings. i tell the guitar
i am ready to be a house. to twist
the pegs & listen until we are all tuned
& ready. no one is ever ready though.
i ask the spiders to play me
a song about dead boys. ask the birds 
to gather plastic shopping bags 
& fill them with fingers that have
escaped from me over the years.
i try to remember how to hold your neck
& you try to remember how to grasp mine
so that i don't choke on the abalone. 

feeding an apple to the moon

you would not believe 
how much work it takes
to reach the teeth. i start from a seed 
in a field of glass. i start with my eyes 
on a golden plate just like saint lucy. the apple
perched right beside them in the dish. 
when you hear "apple"
in a poem it is never just an apple.
it is the skull of a grandmother or else
a pocket bible or else a dragon's ancient organ. 
i wait for all the chickens to return to their
dinosaur palace before i make my trek.
a journey for me is whenever i have to 
take off my skin. i am descended from selkies.
skilled at the art of breaking my face
like a dinner plate. there was night where
i hid beneath the bed. i saw apples grow 
& fall to the floor from the box spring. 
he crawled on top of the bed & the birds 
all screamed. the night field has nothing
to do with the day field. hushed wind.
my shaking hands. i have never been 
a steady human. it takes hours of 
trusting & untrusting shadows but
i always make it & the mouth is always
like a forgotten flower. fish hooks & steak knives
for teeth. i pet the knotted head of the moon.
say, "i know you have been craving this."
she chews & spits out a single ribbon
or sometimes a needle. i have yet to understand
what i should do with them. it is not about
repayment though. it is enough to know
the moon was hungry & i left 
my skin to feed her. better yet,
no one knew where i was. 

alternatives to lawns

we could pile eyelashes. 
rake the fallen birds & wait for their bones.
we live in a world of false greens.
here is where we told the earth
"grow for me" as if the ghosts could
just shed their hunger. we could 
fill the lawn with derelict cars
or broken glass. wear shoes when you
try to cross the threshold
or else your feet might become
lawns too. i remember when 
my parents planted theirs. our yard 
used to be fresh earth. a mud worship.
instead, we laid freckled seed. 
took out sprinklers & fed the lawn.
then we sacrificed a chicken 
on the cement slab of the porch.
let the blood turn to rain above.
hail. hawk storm. nothing comes easy
in a world of rung out sleep.
a field of eyes. a field of teeth.
there is so much we could be gathering.
i tried my best. i tell my brother,
"why didn't we pour feathers?"
there were always so many in the attic
from the visitations of ravenous angels.
i fed them angel food cake. 
sharp fangs grazing my palms.
in the end it will require getting 
on our knees. the roots of grass
drill down & hug the earth's
molten stomach. one by one though.
the lawn could become a plain 
of bottles & weeds. give me a clover
wide enough to land a plane on.
i am traveling from one gender's
little private screaming to another. 
tomorrow, the lawn will be swallowed.
so, for tonight, let's lay here
in the cool green. i will tell you
a secret. i do not know if i care
what is really green or not.  

i've been telling everyone "i'm sorry"

i've been saying "i'm sorry"
since i was a grub in the garden. since i was
a girl in a blender. i say it over & again 
as if it's going to patch the mouth wound
over & make words unnecessary again. 
as if it's my name. 
sometimes when i say "i'm sorry"
it is a ritual of knots. of trying to undo
the first tangle between two of my tongues.
who taught you to speak? what well
did they go to wash their knuckles?
i cut down a tree & found it full of teeth. 
spit my blood into an alphabet. 
here is how you write you name
exactly how they want you to spell it.
like a step off a cliff. like a goodbye.
i wrap my apologies in banana leaves.
put them in a ghost boat towards 
the older planet. the one covered in roots. 
have you ever taken a wrong turn
& ended up home? have you ever
spoken an apology you did not mean
in order to get away? in order to not
be chewed on like chicken bones?
i have given all my sidewalks 
to boys. i have cut off a finger 
& fed it to a dog. when i say, "i'm sorry"
i usually mean, "let's agree 
to be dead together." an airplane 
piloted by a jellyfish. drive me home.
drive me home wordlessly.
here is the way i conjure a broken world.
tell me, what do you know
about mending. when i say,
"here is the fault line i am sewing"
then you know i really mean it.
i do not want to need a cipher
but there are crickets awake now
& they are speeding up time. 

marble tree

we played with the dead man's eyes
until they turned into marbles.
his body lied 
like a pile of broken windows.
we were children 
of the quarry 
& the smashed factory
where weeds grew like skeletons.
i always believed 
in transformation. that the landscape
was a playground 
of televisions. i invented alphabets 
to tell the truth. 
here is where men are
turning me into pink poultry meat.
only it was written in a tongue
the rocks & me understood.
i carried those marbles 
until all the other children
where gone. busy with hair ties 
& sugar free bubble gum. 
planted them in a ragged dirt pile
& waited for the marble tree
to grow. waited days & days.
watched the sun dry out.
plum to prune. it never sprouted.
i always wondered what i had 
done wrong. it is so hard
to kindle with nothing.
speaking to the earth
& begging let something
learn how to be alive. 
now years later i still believe
in marble trees though.
i think maybe if i returned
to the factory yard, the one
right beyond where the plane crashed,
i would find the tree gleaming
with little spheres. blinking 
dead man's eyes. they would 
sing to my like song birds.
swallow gulps of orange juice light.
They would promise me 
None of it was your fault. 

2 sweaters from giovanni's room in the basement of the old apartment 

the snow came in fists
when we visited the city that day. 
you both and me & our black english major boots. 
frost pounded on the doors of 
our faces. crawling in your toyota 
down the highway.
then, drinking tea & standing
in a panera trying to warm up. 
all we wanted
was grandfathers
or in another words
gay books. window glow.
the watering hole turned 
waterfall. i told you 
we have 
a history. now it is summer 
& the sweaters i bought stand
like dormant ghosts. the book store
had a thrift room 
& that's where i found them.
two dad sweaters 
that i layered on before
walking back out 
into the pennsylvania winter. 
one brown with patches
sewn on the elbows.
another an off-white turtle-neck. 
i wonder if they both belonged
to the same spirit.
if, maybe, he too carried them
like animals 
down into a basement
when march started to blush.
sometimes when i wear them
i smell a life i had before.
my queerness, my deepest lineage.
leading me back 
into the space in the sky
where water
becomes snow. decides 
to return to earth,
knuckles ready. 

rare earth theory 

was the first organism lonely?
i like to believe in both wholeness
& fracture. once, i stood 
on the mountain in the days
after a great snow storm. the soil bled 
frigid waters. angels & pigs gathered
to drink. i was one of them.
my greatest fear
is to be rare. i hope there are
more of me. flock of my bones.
herd of a chewed-up star. 
there is a debate about
whether the earth is ordinary 
or rare. once i met an extraterrestrial.
he spoke in syrup. took me apart
with a butter knife to see
what kind of board games 
i kept inside my chest. i told him
about the boy pieces & the girl pieces
& the little thimble. do not go
& tell people of everything
you've seen. i have washed
my eyes in nectar. tasted a tiny 
molten sliver of the earth's core.
in a sense, aren't we all
the first organism? arriving 
to a dinner party in which
i know no one. i go around
asking everyone if they believe
we are alone in the universe
by which i mean, are we all
poets? by which i mean 
there is no big-man god. 
in the snow i saw the tracks 
of squirrels rooting for 
their golden teeth they hid
when the sun was still full of yolks.

contact tracing

in the days after i saw the angel
the telephone rang over & over.
all the ghosts & all the police men
& all the doctors & all the boyfriends 
were calling to hear about my skin.
they asked, "have you died?" they asked,
"have you seen a bleeding moon?"
i answered honestly,
"yes, yes, yes." then they would
hang up as if it frustrated or terrified.
the sighting itself was everything
i could have ever wanted. the angel 
held a spoon of opal & said,
"do not stop eating." in the morning
i could not breathe. i had swallowed
too much. i had seen a land 
of stained glass children. 
i was told i became part of a map.
it was a doctor who called to say,
"you helped us follow him." he meant
the angel. i wondered if 
they could predict who was going
to be visited next or if 
our devices are always a tool of "after."
i have read online that 
if you catch an angel sighting
early enough, you might not 
hover above the ground forever.
it is a nice thought. i miss the soil
on some days but others
i am nothing but honored 
to have been visited. the telephone said
i could take stones & grind them up
& eat them. that it could maybe
weigh me down enough 
so that i inhale like an average animal.
instead, i live my life like a spearmint bush.
as wildly as i can. grow little white flowers.
tell everyone i meet about
the angel. what it was like
to die bursting with light.

amphibial love poem 

my skin breathes like jellyfish veils 
& white shoes made of butter.
queer love is the breathing flesh.
the craving of water
even when we are on land. 
i ask you, in the cool dark 
of my old bedroom, "do you remember
the bottom of the lake?"
when we, frog-hearted, burrowed
in the mud for the winter?
clementine peeled sun. our webbed hands.
sometimes we are walking 
in an eyeball pit & i do not think
anyone knows exactly what to do with us.
we are the sacred mismatched socks.
the story of liminal blood.
conduit or courier. carrying 
a letter beneath our tongues.
it reads, "you are not home."
this is why though we have scissors 
to cut the tongues of angles.
make bouquets of languages 
we will never speak. emerge, like 
paper weights, from the bottom
of the lake. i woke up because
i crave you & i am alive 
in your throat. sing to me again
about what you remember
of our gills. combing the water
for a species to say, "this is what i am."
i no longer wish for such a name.
if someone asks me again
what i am or what i call myself
i will say, "i am your lover."

recitation

i used to take out part of my skull
& store wind up birds inside.
we walked up main street
on a cold march evening
to read poetry to each other. 
plastic wrapped brownies. to be a child
is to never understand 
that you are a child. the way 
a tongue can divide. can serve
as an oar. i could talk us into anything.
into walking in the graveyard afterwards
& standing by the creek 
when the water was black as the sky.
telling you that stars taste like blueberries
even though i have never eaten one.
you would pluck out strands of your hair
& weave them together to form a cord.
you said, "one day it will be long enough
for me to break out our of your life."
the basement had fireflies that lived there
somehow year round. i don't remember
what any of my poems were about then.
i always thought of my self 
as a prophet. preaching to
the early march wild onions.
to the ragged grass of the graveyard. to the
wayward moon we used as a mirror.
you told me we were never going
to get any older. you told me we were
going to live inside this night
until our bones were feathers.
we both knew the sun had other plans
& at some point everyone runs out
of poems to read. 
while it lasted, we told the truth. 
i showed you only once
how to poem my face. 
there, the wind up birds were writing,
stringing metaphors like garland.
you asked, "is that how you stay alive?"
i said, "it is the only way i know how."