uses for a plastic bag

carrying the ghost home.
filling it to the brim with apricots.
to remove the dress
from the blender. to hold
the fresh liver. to put
over the head of a monster
when it emerges from an open window.
pulled over a sneaker
to invent a winter boot
when the storm comes
sooner than promised. 
as a sail when the ships loses
a wing. as a bowl when all bowls
have cracked right down the middle.
to deliver a gift when there is
no wrapping paper. for guilt.
for reconciliation. forgiveness.
for your mother's dirty potatoes
she gives you when she visits
& does not come inside, 
just lingers in the doorway.
a neighbor's cucumbers 
because his garden grew too many.
to ferry bottles of shampoo
& body wash from the car 
into the black hole. to throw up into
on the car ride when 
you would not pull over.
to clean muck from the bottom
of the sink. harvest tin cans.
pull over your hair while dying it red.
avoid stains. to pluck
a dead bird from the sidewalk
& hold it for a moment
wishing it would come alive 
& be furious at you.  

memorial

there aren't enough.
i go down to the quarry 
& gather piles of shale.
once, as a child,
we made a worm graveyard.
said elegies for the necklaces of hearts
smashed under foot.
then, watched as the weeks after
it's construction the stones
slumped & then fell.
the graveyard became 
a video game. the sky outside
had leather shoes & a briefcase.
i hate procedures & every impulse
to legislate love poems.
i do not want to follow
a guide. i want to kick god's teeth out.
i want to carry a shovel
into my life. dig wherever 
the bodies come. in offices 
& at grocery stores. in the parking lot
of a dead toys r us, we kissed
& talked about malls.
a mall is a worm graveyard.
so is a highway & so are most
gas stations. i do not want 
to have to make tangible 
every memory. someday we will
live in a time so just 
that we will walk, dreamily,
& not have any reason to hold on.
each day like a silk scarf.
a spilled bowl of ice cream.
lifting a spoon to your lips. 
for now, we have to made hard candy 
of every wound. let the light
shine through it red & orange
& green. this is not a gem.
this is not sugar. this is scab
as a stained-glass window. 

grown up

do you remember when 
we were weasels eating
the rotten face of a summer squash?
i wish i could be as pink
as i used to be laying 
in the grass & not thinking
about all the bugs who know
my name. centipedes & black widows.
i had always believe i would
grow up to be an obelisk.
a marker of where the birds had come
& died like airplanes. sometimes 
i call my parents & when they answer
all i hear are blender sounds. 
they are spitting out the old bullets
& making protein shakes 
with the darkness. i could have
grown up to be a firework.
i could have flashed. fantom gunshot.
instead i am here collecting golden rod
& praying to a plastic shopping bag heaven.
but back to being rodents.
i saw you & loved you. we ate anything 
the sky spat out. reached in knuckle deep
& twisted until the moon had fins.
a shark in the sink. running barefoot
past any kind of tether. i have
a bank account. in fact actually two.
i do not plan to become a permanent
kind of prophet. instead, i will
keep talking to the stones
until they tell me something i don't know.
"wide awake," one says. "so that you don't 
go hungry," says another. i do not intend 
to be a person with a garage
& i will never be someone 
with a flag pole. i will be a flower spinner.
a dragonfly host. a crystal chicken. 
i will make shrines in my bones
to the purple mouth i used to have
when i ate the precious gems
out of every single corner. 

roofers

let's pry the scales off the back
of the decade & call it a love poem.
men come like lanternflies 
& work to dismantle my face.
i pay them in tongues & tails.
you tell me you believe in change
& then you set fire to the effigy.
a whole town holding hands 
in a circle around a mother figure. 
i promise i am deadly. i promise
there will be a storm worth 
all this preparation. just yesterday
you asked, "are you preparing 
for a doomsday?" i responded 
"all my life." the ceiling that leaked
all kinds of ghosts. pinning them
to the walls of my room like butterfly
specimen. don't take my word
for anything. go outside & see them working
with their shovels & teeth.
in the school yard when it used to rain
the ground would be covered 
with little translucent grubs.
kneeling us children would
peer into their writhing bodies 
& witness the faces of our ancestors.
the world is a process of shedding.
you cannot tell until you see the skin
if it was something you really
wanted to lose. 

razor blade forest
 
i am almost never tender to myself. 
i put the leash on 
& have a telephone walk me 
through the razor blade forest
until i am ribbon. driving,
i look up to a billboard & i see
my face selling a bottle of ketchup.
i didn't consent to this
but sometimes our faces go off
& do crime without us. 
i try to imagine what gentleness 
could look like. a fridge of only butter.
a microwaved marshmallow 
eaten with my hands. i used to be
an altar boy & my favorite role 
was ringing the bell. in the sacristy 
the priest would turn into 
a statue & ask us children 
to name our favorite ice creams.
my dreams turn to pastels & smudge off
the more i try to show them around.
when does a hand become
a corkscrew? how have i always
come open so easily. in the closet
i do at least keep a flock of mourning doves.
i feed them cough drops & iced tea.
they sing & ask, "tomorrow?" 
i shake my head & close the door.
it is not tomorrow yet. i open
the door again just a crack 
to promise, "soon." 

stale exorcism 

we took our faces on plates
to the church for purification.
the oldest man in the world
kept alive by wine & burning tongues.
he would come & paint us 
with cream. he sat on a television
& together we denounced the news.
god knows nothing 
about the current events or else
maybe he would come down again
in the form of a glorious flood
& make us all unicorns.
a rainbow comes & i hide it
so it doesn't get eaten. i place it
inside a doggie crate. feed it turnips
& dandelion greens. don't get me wrong
i am a worshipper just like
the next spoon-carrier but sometimes
i think it would be better to turn
the old man into wool 
& use him to survive the winter.
i never felt clean when we were through,
instead i felt like a pumpkin
scooped of all its vital guts.
a radio tower winks at me all night.
i know that's where the angels go
to hear exactly what i think 
& believe. it used to trouble me
how sometimes i would open my mouth
& they would speak through me
as if i were just a hallway. 
have you ever been
a corridor for school children
to spit inside of? a linoleum prophet.
then, one day, i didn't take my face 
at all. i held it & ran into the woods 
where the birds ate pieces of it.
flew & knit nests with my eyelashes.
god i felt so wild. back in town i hear
they say i am possessed by
a demon of sugar. this is maybe true
but if so i never want to exorcised. 
let me be a plate of sticky buns
for the darkness to come & feast. 

ice skating rink in hell

i'll take what i can get.
we all put on our golden jaws 
to eat the jewels at the bottom
of the lake of fire. i take a blade
& dip it into the old night sky.
drain a mile's worth of oil
to feed the flames. there are miracles 
even in the television's belly.
static saints & their beads.
we sacrificed enough flies,
their bodies cut into eighths,
for the spatula to come & flip 
the howling. here is the joy 
we knew was there. running out
across the ice laden mouth 
of a sleeping violence. throwing
snow balls at each other's ghosts.
here, we have a brief encounter
with a plastic laughter. the kind
that comes in happy meals
& in wind-up mirages. do you 
believe me? it was real. we truly
ran out barefoot across the ice.
all around it was still 
the blatant underworld. faceless
dogs & murky birds. but there
we were with our plum eyes. 
nectar of every smirk. no one
fell through the ice. we were 
just headless song birds. 
no one could steal us. 

self-portrait as an antique shop

haggle for my face.
a cardboard box full of 
black & white photographs
of long dead families. 
a glass case full of rust-laden
18th century syringes. 
do not touch. please feel free
to pick things up & look around.
beanie babies in a bath tub. 
this chest has never been unlocked
& there might be a treasure inside
or else a quilt that smells like 
women's work. needle point.
stork scissors. a manual on 
how to be a wife. yellowing pages.
is that your best offer? here are 
my pocketknives. 
moth wing odors. a pile
of vinyl records with no mouth
to fit them into. does it have
a price tag? does it have
a memory? is this faux fur or 
the afterlife of a real fox?
mounted heads of bears.
carnival glass. uranium glass. 
bifocals that are said to have been
worn by a prophet. 
the bones of a priest. let me show you
what else i have in the back.
history has a way of leaving debris.
my ribs as punch bowl ladles. 
that part is not for sale. 
no, i'm not sure where it's from
or even how old it is.

laundry room haunting

i sifted through a week's dirt.
this was before i had ever
broken a rib & before the ceiling
fell in for the fifth time. 
the apartment hid canaries 
in every closet. it was cracked-knuckle winter.
the curse on the super didn't work yet
& i heard his work boots as they paced
the long hallway. once, i think
these apartments might have been
glorious. remnants of an old city.
most ghosts live like this: on top of
the new staircase. kneeling 
at the machine's mouth. rationing
detergent. smell of a false 
lavender field. i looked up
following a faint sound & a little girl 
with eyes like centipedes stood
in the far corner of the room.
her face had porches & potted roses.
she covered her face with her hands.
"hello?" i asked. she shook her head.
i was not as scared as you might think.
a haunting to me is as mundane 
as a red clover. i finish the load
of laundry. lingered in the middle of
the room. smell of rotten wood 
& must. the building's guts
falling out through a leak in the ceiling.
"if you need anything, let me know,"
i told her on the off chance she was
a living girl. she still said nothing.
i left the room at a steady pace.
considered turning back to check
if she was gone but i am not an investigator.
when a haunting comes it is best
to treat them like a tree or a mailbox.
a nod to their fires & then back
to the doorknob life. in my apartment 
i sat at the kitchen table & counted 
hand prints on the ceiling. 

earth's core

i saw your eyes in the cherry bomb. 
we were digging past dinosaur death
& reaching into a box of costume jewelry.
has your grandmother died yet?
did she leave you a box
of faux furs that smell like cigarettes?
mine still inhabits a closet where
beneath her dresses is a magma hole.
the earth is furious in her guts
just like me. i have taken a shovel
& searched all night in my skin
for an ancient civilization's remains. 
clay pots. spoons. the bone of a murderer.
how do you know the sun isn't 
made of silt? a river with a silken face. 
i have tried before to get deep. i have
torn up floor boards & found bones.
you were standing there & pleading,
"let's just pretend we never saw this."
for as long as i can remember
i've been afflicted with nostalgia.
the past puts on a robe 
and settles in the wiry innards 
of the planet. i ask my lover, 
"how does a tree die, is it roots 
or branches that go first?"
he says, "that is not how trees die." 
i decide to believe that a tree passes on
when their roots lick the earth's 
raspberry heart. 
then, all they can dream of 
is chocolate & sleep.