cassette garden or a blue jay elegy 

play me the best version of your chlorine.
in the burial dirt behind the garage 
i planted my father's cassette tapes.
some of them were steel-tongued
& others were of him singing in the choir.
when i say no one believes me i mean
they put their ear to the soil
& hear blue jays. there are no such thing
as blue jays, only the little ice cream scoops 
of real world removed to make space
for the sky. i would burry my hands 
& run to my mother to say, "i don't have
any hands." she would go & look for them
with me even though she knew it was my fault.
is it true that we, as mice, choose 
the color of our eyes in the next life?
eating a rabbit made of chocolate. eating 
a melting bone. i learned how to play them
anywhere. put the tapes in my mouth 
& hear him saying, "come here."
scissors gliding across a ream of fabric.
i peel open. i pretend to be a machine
or else i am a machine. boom box breath.
listening to the beetles & remembering
everything is about capital 'm' men's pain.
not mine. mine is the cassette tape garden
which is also a farewell plot. a tree grew
which bore the saddest pears. i swallowed them all.
i did not want to share. church music.
ave maria. ave maria. green thumb or guiltless.
the garden cracks its back on a folding chair.
they come & find me but do not recognize me.
pull the tape out of my mouth. 
i am not your song. i am your blue jay.

hammer wedding

you tell me that a love poem
is a toolbox of marching bands.
i carry my hammer.
catastrophe the windows.
there used to be a girl on the roof
but she jumped & turned into 
a heron. we try to get the wasp's nest
but it turns out to be my father's head.
don't tell me you know about my veil.
i have kept it like a quail 
in the singing box all my life.
i whisper to it & say,
"there is not such thing as the sun."
it weeps & thanks me. i don't want to be
your man handle. i don't want
to be your grotto or gorge. i want to be
a knitting needle through the skull
of a night terror. pin your moths 
to the cork. keep your teeth
in your skull. i used to feed you mine
like bubblegum. spat oceans
on the dining room floor.
we hold a wedding but just for
our hammers. mine is the woman.
you have to keep
your rage somewhere. "you may now
break the wall open." do not tell me
i am your stray cat child. i do not want
to be loved in a spare room. 
i want to be a candelabra or at least
a chandelier. 

notes on withdraw

i never said i wouldn't eat your heart.
there are ads in the newpaper
for mousekillers. 
i don't want to hunt for glass anymore.
broken plum seed. fracture
my funny bone & call me a jester.
o queen leek, let's get in the blend
& try to talk about football.
my stomach grows a jaw bone
but no teeth. my hands shake 
& i lift a skull from its velvet pouch.
tell me everything you know 
about being a girl. when i think of myself
i say "we" because i keep a greek chorus
in my head. a mouth with seven beaks.
the enclosure has a feeding trough.
the feeding trough is full of jax.
your heart tasted like peach rings.
i did not leave a single crumb.
all the while you watched & said,
"do it do it." "yes" is a form of submarine.
let's see how deep your yearning goes.
i pay a man to kill a tree. i am my father.
the tree has a brother who haunts the yard
always looking for revenge. 
this is the process of finding your footprints
everywhere & not remembering
being here before. have i really had
so little control over my bones?
yes, the answer is yes. there is
a bowl of strawberry candies
for anyone who wants to be a grandchild
in my house. come here. come closer.
tell me what i look like to you. tell me
if i still could pass as a nun if i needed to. 
do i look as hungry as i feel? 

parade w/ anti-aging 

they make a cream now 
that turns you into a lobster.
live forever. god yourself 
in a little robe. i walk out 
into the night lotion & we are
having a party for everyone
who has decided not to die.
blow up the light bulbs.
write your name in the shop window.
no one is safe from a wrinkle
in righteousness. i put the clown face on
& vote for which pair of teeth 
i want to bite down on the board.
when they cut off our legs 
let's not be afraid. let's instead pretend
the procedure is cosmetic.
something yearned for. how you come apart
has little to do with desire 
& more to do with seams. 
who put you together? whose dogs
do you run away from?
my tongue as a pin cushion.
the grandmothers walk & so do the unborn.
contrary to what some people say,
the unborn are very happy to remain unborn. 
little bubbles in the air. heads full of cranberries.
no air to worry about, just the highway rush.
i pick up a hitchhiker in my parade float.
he says, "what are we doing?"
i whisper, "i have no idea."
he nods & i add, "just go along with it."
which is actually terrible advice.
that is how worlds explode. that is how
you end up drinking gasoline 
in a lava garden. who knows though.
the parade just started or it's ending.
i did not ask enough questions
before i go into the cockpit of this body.
now i'm trying to play space invaders. now i'm
dressing a wound. the best treatment for age i hear
is bathing in the fountain of youth
which is really just a puddle of oil
in the grittiest gutter. unsuspecting. 
all prizes are cloaked in terror. or else
to win is to be in terror. maybe i am 
less alive than i thought. maybe i am 
walking towards the edge of the earth.
of course i believe the earth can be
walked off of. i have seen it happen. 
some people sprout wings & others 
become comets. goodbye. goodbye. goodbye. 

census

when they came to count my fangs
i said, "i do not have a war inside me."
the man frowned & made notes.
in this country everyone is a moving city.
i build a train. i build a tunnel.
find a secret history where everyone
had to live as ghosts. when i say, "everyone"
i always mean us & not them.
they put a purple 'x' on my door
which could mean anything. 
a friend tells me they feel affirmed 
by the marking. "the birds can see me" they say.
i want to be so happy. instead, i make 
the same 'x' beneath my tongue.
tell the birds, "i am terrified of the bus station."
once, i found a piece of a body
in a trash can there. gender is often
"what were you turned into." i wanted
so badly to be recorded that i was
& it wasn't good enough. they take 
our pictures with a polaroid & then eat them.
i ask them "what does that do?"
they say, "i was just hungry." they make a dream
in which we are all beta fish. gorgeous 
& incapable of living in the same water. 
i spit up a wrench in the bath. i use it
to make a telephone. i call a neighbor 
& ask, "what did you give them?"
the neighbor whispers, "nothing."
i am embarrassed. i always shed too much
when a fist turns into a shadow puppet.
let's curate our capture. let's by
shiny data. i do not want to live forever.
that is only what i am told to want.
i crave unknowability. mystery is a gift 
that only the gutless can get.
write down that i am one of those bodies
that doesn't stop barking. 

wing harvest

the ripening happens all at once.
"it is time" i say into the darkness
of a television night.
we were asleep in a pitless peach.
nectar still on my shoulders.
i was once told i would never 
be a harvester because i am too velvet.
i laughed & bought a knife
from a crossroads man. 
i sharpened it on my own teeth.
the birds shed their flight 
as they pass on to their next lives as fish.
you have to be there at the split second
their soul turns inside out.
or else you will end up with just
handfuls of beaks & feathers.
the tongue field laps at the night's cream.
when i was human, i sometimes
made promises i couldn't keep
like "i will save you some" or 
"i will come back" or "i'll call you."
instead, i took those words & knit cozies 
for my bones so that no one 
will be able to turn them into video games.
the wings are fresh. the wings
are brown & yellow & blue.
they are not for eating. they are
for keeping. for following. for worshipping.
i fill a whole backpack. thrum all the way home.
hang them out in the living room
to dry. it doesn't take long
for them to settle. i usually hear the birds
asking questions about the afterlife.
i tell them, "keep heading towards jupiter."
my father harvested birds too.
he told me, "the trick to staying alive
is to fill your ears with cattails."
i have never listened to him. i love
to hear the dead talk. how else
would i know who i am 
& what i am gathering? 

cigar box uses

the spare hand. the key to the tunnel
beneath the house. a tooth. a tooth brush.
my uncle used to smoke
in the humid summer. sweet ash.
i was in the yard eating bees. i was 
in the yard digging a hole
to put my gender in. a place to hide
the blood. a box to burry the dead chicken.
cigars of course. you could fill it with
cigars but the primary use for an object
is never the best one. filled to the brim
with marbles. a cow tongue still talking.
there are never enough boxes in my house.
i search for more places to sequester 
my ghosts. bird cage. storm cellar.
damp steps to the well. have you been a boy
inside someone else's dream?
they would ask me to stand on the table
& be the turkey. devoured one leg
at a time. i had a toy video camera.
i said, "this is a movie" pointing
the device in their faces. like popped balloons
they retreated inside a cigar box. 
ashes of your family. band aides for the journey.
a juice box. granola. a single bullet
that was once used to kill a deer.
i believe in repurposing everything 
but especially my memory. i was a mail man
to my uncle. i brought him dead lips
for him to sleep inside. i was an angel to my uncle.
i delivered meat covered in powdered sugar.
empty out the box. i need a place
to put my knife. i shake the box
as if it were a gift. open it again.
the knife is gone & it's a spool of thread. 

dog

the four legs i run on are not enough.
i want to be a centipede. i want to
crawl on the ceiling. you walk me 
out into the yard & put me down.
a bullet or a beetle. there are bowls
of my blood boiling in the sun.
collar jingle as i ran through god traps. 
to be a dog is to eat the words
as they come out of your mouth. 
is to look your capture in the eyes 
& say, "thank you, let us be loyal."
yes, let us be soldiers with nothing but stones.
i used to pray. i used to eat cherries.
i used to have a trunk to fit all my teeth in.
now, i get all my lighters from the sidewalk.
i tell myself it is more natural this way.
brunch is full of angels. i sit
beneath the table & count their toes.
eighteen on each limb. you have two choices
in the end. you can either sleep until you are moss
or bark until you split in half. become
two beings. a dog & a bird. the bird 
dies almost instantly. the dog goes
to hunt. remembers being a wolf.
remembers the haunting of the mountain top
& how, in the deepest veins
of the forest, the trees will part for you.
how you will become a multiple. a joint
in the forest's leg. this is what i dream of
& yet there are light bulbs in my throat.
why is the castle a place to go
& not a place to leave? there is gravity
in their tongues. they say, "get down from there."
i am standing on the roof, panting. 

library of picture shows

i go to make a video of my phantom face.
walls move like centipede stories.
i don't write poems about gods 
i write poems about secrets. about
where the seams fray & on the other side
are monks. let's be devotees 
to the land of elsewhere. to the fallen angels 
& their pomodoro method 
for completing their assigned tasks.
i eat with my hands. i carry a gun i do not know
how to load or use. up the street
there are flocks of white men 
who i am terrified of. i want to put them
all in pale yellow to make them slightly
less threatening. do you know if you
paint your bedroom red you will only dream
of bees? i tried their & became a keeper.
ate nothing but honey until the world
re-opened. neon bible. neon open sign
that comes back to the window
of my house. i always have to remove it
& burry it, knowing it will come back.
i do not want visitors. i want to watch
a movie with the laugh track on. 
the movie is not funny but it also is
in the way that all picture shows are funny.
here is a man pretending to be a man. here is
a giraffe who is also an actor. i take you
to the attic & show you my girlhood
i still keep just in case. you never know
when you might not want to be yourself. 
here is a video too of me turning into 
a glove. isn't she terrifying? 

host

dear guest, i did not mean to
have a guillotine in the living room.
let's instead talk about taffy
& the neighbor boy without a face.
i have been watching mass 
on television. there are options
for the sick to still be holy
or so i am told. i have waited years
for someone to take me up on my offer
to let me swallow them whole.
i promise you i will be a good host.
you can eat whatever sweets you want.
we can go to the carnival &  
throw darts at a wall of skulls. 
you can be my lover or my puppeteer 
or my god. i am open to any & all options.
really, what i crave is a break 
from being a conscious bee hive. 
i no longer want to look at the oracle
& think, "sunday night is coming."
let me walk around like a corn dog.
thoughtless & whimsical. will you
worry for the both of us? 
will you call our senator & plead
for a ghost vote tonight? nothing 
in this world makes sense unless 
you go to the river & talk to the foot prints.
let's drown but just for the afternoon.
target practice with the gnats.
i bought a new carpet for you.
i am sorry, the fire place does not burn wood,
only limbs. you will have to go
to the cow village & pray to their radio
if you want to get any. for now,
let's sleep. i'll be your feather salad.