iced tea

the mood board is a dream
of sorcery. all the thumb tacs i keep
in my cheeks. what is flesh but
a backyard trampoline? you look at me
& say, "don't let this become us"
as we pass a house without a door.
sometimes i consider buying you 
a planet for us to make out on.
then i check my bank account 
& i am too full of myself. i am too
eager to be a dragon. there are 
more men in this world than fire exits.
what i'm trying to say is let's not
tell too much of the truth. let's not
claim to eat pudding when we're 
eating blood. the knife collector
knocks on our door & promises
that he has a great sale for us. 
there's nothing to do but run
& try to quench your thirst.
as a girl sometimes we would brew iced tea
by leaving it out in great jugs in the sun.
i wanted all my "girlfriends" to be girlfriends
which is ironic because now i only really love
beautiful boys. let the angels spit into the leaves.
crack my spine for ice cubes.
a postage stamp of splenda. 
drink until i have a headache forest.
"this is delicious" i say while pretending
to swallow whatever moon we've milked
to make this day. i have never once
lied to you. whenever i lie 
it's someone else. a falcon on my tongue.
i can't be blamed for what happens
after we are quenched. this is our
backyard fib. this is the rotten oldsmobile
& the wiffle ball bat. close your eyes.
"go touch grass," 
the electric prophet instructs. 
there is no grass so we pretend. 

anti-homecoming

i take a ride on a hot air balloon
hoping you will see me & know
i am doing something else today without you.
sometimes "home" is a plate
of vanilla wafers & sometimes it is
a car horn being pressed over & over.
from where i am, everyone looks
like centipedes. distance is 
the greatest alchemist. goodbye 
fireflies & goodbye gun shots at night
& the race car sounds of neighbors.
i wish i could take a crow bar
& pry the "me" out of "home."
i am not from anywhere. i am a salamander
who does not remember what 
the rocks called out when i hatched. 
a yard sale sign written in headache markers.
to return would assume there is
a stagnant place where the dinosaurs 
don't even know they're supposed to die.
i believe in ghost therapy. going out
& talking to the dead versions of yourself
to learn the exact the moments they died. 
a chronology of bones & telegrams.
there are so many trees i used to worship
that are now just telephone booths
or rotting pickup trucks. do you know
the marsh used to have a prom night?
all bugs & creatures would assemble 
& dance like nothing 
would ever kill them. so no,
i am not coming. i will stay up here
where everything is a dinner plate. 
canned pea row houses. a street built
from shed pupils. what will you do 
with the whites of your eyes? 

gender marker

not be confused with grave marker. not to be
mistaken for a goal post or a golden goose.
not to be confused with syrup 
from the oldest maple tree. not to be 
wrongly identified as mason jars full
of watermelon ants. not to be falsely said 
to be a god. not to be confused with weeping.
not to be incorrectly seen as a portal 
in belly of a space ship. not to be mistaken
for a loose tooth. not to be inaccurately 
depicted as a sinking ship. not to be confused with
mirrors or water shoes. not to be confused with
the silver jaw of an angel. not to be 
mistaken for a way out or a way towards 
validity. not to be misguided by ammonites 
& their quest for jewelry in the primordial 
shopping mall. not to be confused with
our mothers or our fathers. not to be 
misinterpreted as prophecy.
not to be unexacted as a garbage island. not to be
spoken of on unfounded terms of 
"sweat" & "spirit." not to be mistaken
as a highway towards personhood.
not to be confused with grief. not to be
confused with joy. not to be saltines 
or shoelaces. not to be confused with realness. 

roofers

the geese come & start building
a god on the roof. haven't you ever
gotten together your debris
& thought, "i could worship this?"
being born into salt means always
checking the weather. is the love jukebox 
going to melt into an ocean 
or are we going to stay up all night
talking about deer? the work is brief 
& involves molting. losing a face
to gain an old one. i wonder if 
we are all nesting dolls. trying to find
the popcorn at the center. i used to think
i could make a life out of parables 
but now i am inspecting the house
of stained glass & teeth. the roofers 
are here to make sure the ceiling
no longer leaks. to ensure we have
a barrier between us & heaven. 
tin roof song. a banjo we buy
just to bury. don't worry. i am sure 
when all is said & done there will be
someone operating this machine.
he might have opera glasses
for all i know. he might drink lemonade 
& cross his legs just like i do.
the roofers leave behind remnants 
of their excavation. stray fins.
a broken gutter. we go out together
to collect the pieces. the god is shiny 
& not at all what we expected.
i try to stay positive for you.
i say, "it looks like the father
i always wanted." you say, "i don't know
what it is but it'll keep us 
out of the shoelace waterfall."
have you ever had your door kicked down?
there is little to be done about it.
we go inside & try to be silk worms 
for the rest of the evening. 

worm 

i have as many hearts 
as you want me to have. 
cut off my hand & it becomes
it's own private love poem. 
row houses that caught fire
on that night in march
when the soil was coughing up sunglasses.
i thought we would put forevers
in the oven like pretzels. i thought i would
turn into a pile of socks with you.
when i was a young girl 
we used to play a playground game
called "worm graveyard"
going out the day after a rain
to harvest the dead worms 
& burry them. hearts like kickballs
one drying after the other
in the bruise-laden sun.
everything is too brief but 
especially worms. we made headstones
from leaves. said elegies.
one worm who loved video games
& another who wanted to be
a sky diver. our dreams are like this.
little hymns in the ice age.
i'm telling you though
i can find another & another heart
if you will just keep me
as i want to be remembered.
a shovel in a bucket of marshmallow.
the radio gargling with salt water.
to be a worm is to cut in half 
& decide which side to say farewell to.
or to always live with two bowl 
of chips on your lap. i sometimes want
to call you again. i want to tell you
about the worms in the parking lot
& the worm graveyards & 
the worm life i am living.
there are days when i think with
all of my hearts & days where 
i let a child come & cut off my head.
tell me, have you lived like this too?
how would you say farewell 
to the worms? what would you use
as a headstone? i imagine
cutting off my fingers. planting each
in the damp earth. kneeling until
they come alive not as children
but released selves that no longer
need me to dream of cream. 

renaming

you wrote your name in spaghetti &
fed it to the pigeons. do you remember
the angels you would pass
when you lived in the city
& every day was ghost feed? 
they had signs with options on them.
things to call yourself. "disaster" 
& "dirt" & "deep." sifting in the river
you found the teeth of prehistoric selves.
those selves got their names 
from chewing on geodes. it was a process
of taking apart the skeleton
& looking for a price tag. what 
do you want the fire to call out when
it comes for you? you do not want
to be remembered as the stack of ideas,
"whisk" & "worm" & "wool."  
to become a new name is to step
through an archway & watch 
the world behind you go orpheus 
in the distance. you've never meant
any change to be permanent but then
there you with a butterknife 
& a beautiful face. this was the only option.
you had to race the rats. you had
to cut the old song out
with scissors & feed it to the pigeons.
they then are the last ones
to say your old name & then it is gone.  

floodwater 

in a world of meat & buckets
we tried to survive as half-finish fish.
"do not open the window," you said
after it had rained for 
eighteen years. 
we were the portal babies.
the cherubs painted without gills.
outside, everyone else had gone
primordial. wriggling with their
tendrils. the soup of heat
& burning angels. we had decided
to hold our evolution hostage.
become shut-ins. watch reruns 
until the words of the characters
slipped like butter from out mouths.
remote control batteries died. 
electricity turned to song.
staring at the black tv & still seeing
the episodes rolling as ghosts.
a knock on the front door came
each & every night. i was 
the tempted one. you said,
"go to sleep." i imagined 
opening the door & finding 
the world as it once never was.
green grass & yolky sun. 
peering out the window,
shipwrecks as far as the eye could see.
"what if it's this time," i'd always think
hoping for a utopia. of course,
i opened the door one night.
you had been tired
from running in circles.
dizzy, you fell into bed.
i knew it was my chance. 
yes yes yes, i touched the knob
like a forbidden fruit. turned it
& the water came like a fist.
flooded the whole downstairs
before i could shut it. i gasped
for air. i wept. i knew you would be
furious at me. i tried to find a way
to bailed the water out.
tried prayers & spoons. 
when you found out though you 
did not yell & you did not scream.
you said, "i was curious too"
about the knocking & the dream
of a fresh world. you kissed 
my forehead & helped me
out of the water & up
the stairs into dry blankets. 
outside the windows, i heard screaming
all night long. only in the morning
did it stop. ghost maybe
begging to come inside. they were so close. 

blood letting 

who do you want to give
your bile? the doctor 
is a lego man. he says,
"fork over your eyes in exchange
for a life without pain."
sometimes the pain is so a part of you
that you wonder if you would
be the same body if it were released.
joints that sing like wet violins
& choking oboes. i remember of course
a time where it wasn't so bad.
when i could stand in the yard
& run towards an angel with all my might
without falling apart. the skeleton 
is an unfurling creature. each tomorrow
a slip & slide hymnal. 
you watch the blood rush swell
from trickle to river. a garden hose.
feeding the grass every cherry pie
& snow cone. soon you will faint
& the doctor will say you are
on the mend. he will use a pocket watch
to measure your wings. when you wake
you will open your eyes & find
quarters in their place. those little holy
george washingtons gazing silver
a the hearth room. he will say,
"it is a miracle." the angels in the yard
will squawk like geese. return to their migration.
you will return to the place
where the blood was spilled.
think of turning it into pillows 
& handing them out on a street corner
to strangers, telling them,
"my blood still want to kill me."

whipped cream

i used to eat everything by tablespoon.
bees & caterpillars & birthdays.
you tell me i need to stop thinking
that i am alone. i have never confessed to you
about the plum tree or even 
the ghost kitchen. i stand there
at night & prune leaves. open the fridge
to find rows & rows of whipped cream.
"feast" is a word that has never
come to visit my teeth. instead,
i know the mundane famine of almost living.
almost enough. almost on fire.
almost homeless. almost eating plastic.
almost kissing a dagger. so badly i want 
to not have to return to these sepulchers
i want to crack a whole carton of eggs into the pan.
feed all the wandering bears but not feed
myself. dear lover, here it is.
here is the grove of horses. here are
their hooves. here is the last time
i ran. to be not alone would mean
i would need to show you the light bulbs.
that is too much work for one lifetime,
isn't it? well, tonight i will show you
one thing. here is the bowl of whipped cream.
here is the spoon i use. here is 
the way my stomach feels full of clouds
when i am done. here is how
i try to lick the last tastes of sweetness 
from the bottom of the bowl. 

roller skate baby

in the back of your car 
we ate our shoelaces. 
me, the backup friend 
& you a girl with electric fruit. 
back then, everyone was roller-skating 
their way into a television show
while i tried to learn
how to clip my fingernails.
i had a museum of bathroom mirrors
waiting for me every time i opened
my closet. i hate the idea 
of queerness & transness as a secret
or a confession. still, i wanted to tell you
so badly that i liked girls & boys.
you were sucking on a ring pop
listening to the alternative radio station.
 my body is a gumball machine. 
you had asked me
if i liked any boys. i said, "yes"
& in my head i thought, 
"sarcophagus." in the roller rink 
parking lot your lips were blue.
i said the boy's name which was,
"destination." you furrowed 
your brow & looked like you wanted
to reply, "i do not know him."
you held my hand as girls do.
as girls do, right? walking into
the neon toothed parking lot.
we were what, seventeen? still
made of pop rocks. i craved
to ask, "do you want to practice 
kissing?" we had done this before
on sleepovers & on bedroom floors.
instead i noted your stretched shadow.
licorice asphalt. streetlamp glow,
illuminating your face.