still life w/o apples

don't tell me this is a tree
when it is a birthday cake.
i know a delicious fist when i see one.
let's go down to the dollar store and
buy a shot gun. let's take a boat
out into the kitchen sink
& hunt for sharks. your mother
was a prophet & so we put her
in a pickle jar to show at family reunions.
pretending to drink from a red solo cup. 
the t-rex rules apply here.
hold your breath. do not move
& the seeds will not open &
we will not have to weed the garden all year.
sometimes i fantasize about 
getting into oil painting. about filling
a bowl with skulls & painting them instead
as oranges or grapefruit. don't get me wrong
i have eaten apples core & all. i have 
swallowed arsenic. i have dances 
on the back of a knitting needle
while it became a weapon. they say 
the devil is in the debit card or was it
the details? saying are just mundane spells.
don't answer the door if there's a knock
in the middle of the night. it might be
an apple tree begging to be captured.
they are more trouble than they're worth.
instead, i take out my iphone camera 
to check if the centipedes on the wall
are a hallucination or a texture.
i take a picture & the phone dies. i guess i
won't ever know. you can chose 
to not paint them too. you can fill the bowl
with fruit & skip the apples. birth of portals.
what is left out is a place to walk through.
this is how i was born. this is how i
walked into my gender
 like an onion onto a cutting board.

kinds of rat traps

tell me all the ways i will be captured.
snap behind the fridge. chandelier
falling so that i become a punch bowl.
i do not have enough doors
to run out of. there is a forest fire
that speaks my name over & over.
a conjuring. i am summoned 
to staircases & dark alleyways of broken glass.
there are the more humane. the door
that closes you in. the sudden shock
like a lighting dog. my little ghost machines
who will we call home tonight.
knocking on the door of a house
i once owned & finding the dwelling empty still
even after all these years. has anyone
ever waited for you? even for a second?
i relish those moments when i see
a face as a pie crust. when we eat
as much as we can in the guillotine room.
not i. not i. i never had gold for breakfast.
i never held a gun like an infant. 
or else there is another way out. i am always 
looking for the trap door or the bookshelf
that turns into an entrances. 
running my fingers along the wall.
my tail, like a pursed lip, behind me. 
there are jaws. there are circuses of farewell.
i come in search of a hole in the wall.
leave like black walnut rotting 
in the yard. my guts, stain-worthy & wild. 

a+d ointment 

do you smell like paradise?
i do not. instead, i turn myself
into a burn pile. give me 
your grandmothers. give me your
grease & guts & deer hide. 
we go into the eye of a needle
& sit there to rest. never push through
to the other side. life is a series 
of archways. walk beneath this one
with me. i turn into a pie pan.
rubbing the apples with sugar.
how do you pronounce your aches?
i do mine with a harmonica 
& a stray cat. feed the moon
from your palm & she will start
to come to the window 
with donkey lips. everyone just craves
reunion. the trouble is 
most of us are looking to reconnect
with fragments that will
never go back together. get your
collage face ready. put on
your rain boots, we're kings.
we're jewelers cutting the gods
their new sets of eyes. i don't want
to smell like the peach babies 
we pluck from trees screaming.
i ask you, "how bad is it?"
the gash goes all the way
to the bone. you say, "it will heal"
by which you mean "another one
for the suitcase." jumping rope
while i wait. the blood falls out
like a lidless blender. there was
never a chance. we had the stained glass
teeth & the microfilm scripture. 

washing machine

i put a leash on my hand
& walk it down to the soap lands 
to drink. inside the gut circus 
we find our sock orphanage.
when i say i want to come clean
i do not mean i want to tell the truth.
i mean the truth is telling me.
zooming back to see my life 
& thinking "who is this monster?"
you are always the gentler tongue.
you say, "get me a glass of blood."
in the fridge is the body of an angel.
it lasts all winter if you are not greedy.
the stains do not ever come out.
not from this life or the last one.
i used to go to the laundry mat
& pray for salvation. watching
all the wads of clothing
roll & roll. their owners, naked
sitting on plastic folding chairs.
i trust no one. i wash my dresses 
in the sink. hang them up 
around the house. ghosts pop into them
from time to time. i say, "you look lovely"
&, embarrassed, they vanish.
the trick is bleach or so i'm told.
bleach & a head without any syrup. 
i can't live without the sugar though.
i'll go mad. i'll start chasing ants
into their little kingdoms. i'll start
demanding rent from the quail. 
instead, i subsistent in lavender chaos.
the washing machines of my eyes,
churning. spitting suds in the sink. 
i have a dirty mouth & i intend to use it. 

rice cooker

i put the bees in their tuesday outfits 
so we could eat what was left
while they were preoccupied.
i don't want rice again
i want to put the catastrophe into grains
& pour curry over their heads.
the machine is a belly world.
picking gnats from the ceiling
& finding each is a piece of shrapnel.
on the television the world is eating itself 
with a spork. garbage disposal screaming.
i crave to devour as much hair as i can
before the time i turn thirty.
nothing is guaranteed though.
some people turn into bugs
before their fifth birthday.
some people open the front door 
& let all the cats out. "was he really
that bad?" my grandmother once asked.
she was dead already. this was just a seance
& i was hoping she would turn out
to be a feminist. she is/was not. 
instead, she left diet pills in my lunch box.
killed a bird & hung it from the power line.
in a world without ankles
i am the pogo stick. my lover teaches me
how to measure rice in the cooker
with my hand. palm to the bottom.
water to the knuckle. outside
everyone is on fire at least a little bit.
it's good to ask if someone wants
to be happy. most of us do not want
to be happy. to do so would mean 
letting the trees talk loud as they want.
giving up the television words 
& going out to the actual warzone. laying
against the ground & feeling exactly 
how the soil trembles. tonight i eat
my pinecone meal. i plant a hydrangea bush
inside the rice cooker & close the lid.
open it forty-five minutes later
to find a lamb there, sleeping. 

model t

ride with me on the back of a false god.
i was told we were highway sisters
& i can see the resemblance. 
our teeth tossed like dice. i have been 
collecting specimens. i have been
calling the friday bigrade. no one has seen
a victory in the last hundred years.
tell me, did your ancestors burn 
your only piece of the moon? did they
put the fat in their mouth & suck?
i ask for a vaccine against the decade. 
let's not talk here out in the open
where all the mice can see us. i need a bee hive.
i need a brethren castle. instead, i have
the rusted yard. the corn field
cut for the winter. there are so many places
to go & run. i hold the factory in a soft heart place.
it's where my father found his gender.
only through repetition. assembly line.
how do you power you hunger? i give mine
a galloon of gasoline. i tell it, "we could
own the mountain." no one owns the mountain
of course but it's covered in ear tags.
herd the cow into my mouth. we need
only five hundred more signatures before
we have a consensus. none of us wants 
to drive a car to work. 
none of us want to wear the leather gloves.
the car is running in the driveway.
we really have to go. there are grapefruit waiting. 

dead man's curve

the road twists its lips into a snarl
or a grin. a bouquet of teddy bears
left out in the rain to become demons.
darkness is where we can go
to eat chocolate. i drive & you play
on your phone. you turn into a prophet.
i turn into a disciple. we are on our way
to foretell the coming 
of a great pile of buffalo skins.
let's not pretend the land doesn't remember.
grudges are as deep as the shale.
water carries blood & vice versa.
once i kneeled to quench my thirft
in a stream. i looked at my hands,
cupping the water, finding them crimson.
the deer come here to make themselves
into martyrs. the birds then arrive
to feast. play percussion song 
on the ribs. when was the last time 
you drove this slowly? i was a teenager
& i gripped the wheel, holding on
to a dinner plate. i ran a stop light
& no one was around. i pulled over
weeping to the coyote. "don't come
& devour me." punishment is less
a force of nature & more a force of
memory. here is how the earth did not let me
get out without bruises. without
a man in my backpack. once, a man's wife 
dropped ribbons from her hair
before jumping off the roof
& becoming a blue heron. that ribbon
is the road i used to take to your house.
the road i would take & call 
the fireworks over & over until she answered.
until she took out her pocket-knife
& made the cockroaches talk. 
i'm not afraid of travel or even if fire.
i am scared instead that we will 
come out on the other side of the ridge 
& not be able to remember each other.  

quantity over quantity 

i have been told i look like a sea gull.
mirrors turn into little factories.
i don't know how to be a thumb creature anymore.
i apply to a job on mars. i apply to a job
making wax models of myself.
there was an ad on my phone today
for vacationing in heaven. when was the last time 
you made a sandwich from only hair?
i have eaten what the earth does not want.
i have built hundreds of houses 
from only feathers. i was told by a voice
coming out of the wall, "build an arch."
i reject all notions of two by two. 
even the flood is heteronormative. instead 
i tell the animals to fit as many as they can
on my egg carton raft. pill bugs & elephants 
& neighbors. i pull a snake from my mouth.
i sell five eyelashes to the highest bidder.
the auction house is not a place
but a state of mind. how can i convert
these shoulders into gold. how can i 
plant a potato & wait long enough
for it to grow into a child. we cut 'x's
into the walls. dig here. the spare room
full of nothing but shoes. there has
to be another way. or else we are already full.
no vacancy on my solar system. just 
a lot of trading cards & a lot of bicycles.
don't get me wrong though.
i also want it all. i want to be full. 

2 weeks notice

tell your god you will not eat the planet.
there are whales underneath my eyes.
i used to pull ribbons out of my mouth
for a room full of jenga blocks.
pulling free a foundation beam. 
soon the collapse will be beautiful
& all yours. i write my name on demolition sites.
i bring a box of chocolates 
to the protest. the protest has pickle jars 
full of specimens. we are all trying to 
give over evidence. "here is how the hours
have been used to mulberry me."
a tooth pick made of glass. 
the dentist in the glove box who says,
"you could do just another week."
hunger is a little town in the snow.
no lights on. just a grocery store 
in the dark. let's not pretend i was a saint.
instead, i was a body with blood in it.
i carried a pocket knife into the database 
or the hot water. do you have experience
wringing a bone of its milk? i do.
i learned exactly how hard to squeeze.
there is the gold. there is the doctor 
& the promises. none of this will ever
make you a cherry tree. you already are
a cherry tree. i am collecting pits.
i am going to find a payphone
& call the factory just to hear it breathe. 

skinny dipping

there are not enough ghosts to go around.
i see you pulling elephants from your mouth.
the lake is full of red jello but we swim anyway.
i could go on & on about every way 
you stripped me down to me necklaces.
instead i will just show you the callouses
on my feet & the scar in the shape of a rabbit.
we drive slow at night. the deer are deering.
standing in flocks of three & waiting
to ascend into heaven for the winter.
it was january & the pool water unfroze.
i was fourteen or fifteen. i said, "watch me!"
there was no one watching but an owl 
with a mouse in his mouth. haven't you 
ever taken a moment to relish your prey?
i have not. i am an audio-tarian meaning
i only eat sound. the water hit me 
like piano mondays. my heart a little pomegranate.
get your thumbs in there. get your teeth
pulling husk from hail mary. i do not 
know how i got out alive. i shivered
for days after. sometimes i still shiver
from the cold of that plunge. all the scales 
& talons i shed. limbs floated in the water
around me. bare as my bones would let me.
i had never wanted so badly to be kissed.
to have the warmth of someone else's blood.
never mistake a fire for company. 
unzip your skin in august when all the cicadas
are on television & boys fall from the trees
all day in the form of soup peaches 
& mango. don't get me wrong,
i loved to hear my bones ring. i loved to see
all my future teeth buzzing like beetles.
i loved to be, for a moment, undone.