midnight men

lock the door with jupiter blood.
we burn the moon in the fireplace 
so that the night sky can stretch 
her legs. have you ever seen 
a midnight man? i ask the rats 
who are busy playing harpsicords
& eating dust. the rats scatter.
they do not want to know. 
 they stand in the yard at night. their bodies
are static & wool. eyes yellow
& green like dropped words. 
they knock on the door. put on
their sweet voices to try to get you
to come closer. my biggest secret is
i once laid down in a bed of teeth
with a midnight man. his skin shimmered 
a pearlish white. he grinned & talked
like a television. i said,
i have always wanted to be eaten
only it wasn't my voice speaking.
i was like a puppet. blood trickling
from my mouth & my eyes.
he reached inside me. extracted 
jewels & juke boxes & pocketknives.
all my treasures. insisted that this
was a toll for his company 
& i gave it eagerly. when they come
& make a home inside your mind
you chop off your own fingers 
willingly. this is why i say 
do not talk to the window at night.
take the blood of a trusted planet.
paint it over your eyes 
& try to sleep. i know. i know
i hear them talking too. 

sewing machine

tell me where you keep the mouth?
i need to make sure
no birds get out
of this salad bowl. i would
do it by hand but there are
gods for this now.
now we can feed our hand
through the chaos engine 
& get a pillow on the other side.
do you remember sitting
side by side & planning 
our evacuations? do you remember
the house burning like
a ceremony? i kissed you 
like eating the last fig
in the whole world. you promised
everything that could not
be promised. i stayed awake
for seven years 
trying to sew a wedding dress.
out always came a morgue.
i told you, "i am working
i am working." 
the last message i sent to you said,
"i can't believe we were
just standing in a mine field
& didn't know it." i took a walk
to the dead tavern
with my face wrapped in
scarves. the wind blew
& turned the cell phone
into a shot gun. you didn't say
anything in return. i went home
& could sew everything. 
baby bonnets & wedding gowns
& funeral suites. filled a whole closet
& then set it one fire. 

freezer love poem

i crawled into the snowfall 
to be a girlfriend. 
let's dress in our furs. let's
light a fire for the ancestors.
i eat my life
in freeze frames. a pirogue 
palace. you used to 
drag me by the hair. i used to
laugh about it. opening the door.
a portal into your family portrait.
gust of frigid air. during
the ice age we were kernel
of catastrophe. a saber-toothed
tiger's fury dream. 
hunting a tongue to keep.
once when the power
went out we burried
our wedding rings
into the snow outside
to keep them from melting.
broccoli forest. wolves 
we both secretly feed
the good meat to. when we kissed
it turned amphibial. 
breathing on a frog
to bring it back to life. 
no more room inside
the salvation room. it's just
for the chicken fingers 
& your polaroid camera.
picking me up, you promised
we would have a honeymoon. 
instead, you closed the door
& i had to eat mango popsicles 
to survive. my blood turned 
into playgrounds. 
i thought i could keep going. 

changing the locks

i tell you i see the world
through the door's throat.
a gullet for reaching. all day
i try to become a mail man.
i deliver a package of fires. try
to be a lover & instead 
i break my fingers into bread crumbs.
have you ever tried to 
gut an animal? our bodies
do not want to come apart.
instead, each movement is a reminder
that this was all once whole.
screws on the floor that turn
to beetles. i find his name 
in my mouth & no plier
will get it out. doesn't everyone want
a life free of yesterday? cutting
the tail off & watching it writhe.
it turns into another version of you
who hair never stops growing.
the screw driver prophet. 
canned holy water. we drink sodas 
in the yard. untie a noose hung
from the tree. clip our fingernails
into the dirt. test the lock twice
before we believe it works. 

saw mill

i showed you my fingers
& asked
"which one
would you like
to eat?"
there is a dragon
in the supermarket.
i sometimes wake up
in a morgue 
& underneath
every sheet is my father.
he has eyes like dice.
how old were you
when you realized
no one had taught you
how to love?
i open my mouth
& spit thumb tacs
into the toilet.
split my lip open
on the way. for a year
i eat only pickles,
convinced there is 
a cleanse to be had.
online, i order
a new family.
they come wrapped
in plastic. they are
honey flavored.
the basement was where
my father went
to build his faces.
he had a table saw 
& sometimes he would joke
that it could lop
my fingers off.
i pictured the straight wound.
the stump on my hand.
he laughed like 
beer bottle caps in a pocket.
the worst part
is carrying the wooden spoon.
i tell people all the time,
"i am just like him."
an act of conjuring 
as if i could rewrite my life
with the unwinding of words.
laying face up in the yard
after jumping
from the roof. 
i thought i was
laying on the sawing table.
i screamed. 

no matter

you can finish the nightmare
when we're home &
there is no one watching.
a lemon is a place to be a seed.
sewing a lock of hair
into the hem of a pair of underwear.
there are not enough witches
in this town. the council meets
only when a tomato rots.
they have little notebooks. they have
coriander wigs. walk on coals
all the way to the plate of lady fingers.
i don't mean desserts i mean
ladies were harmed in the making
of this ritual. a television plays
a rerun of the 9/11 news.
i was at a birthday party. everyone
was eating with their fingers.
knuckle-deep in icing.
keep the scary story at arms-length 
& it won't have to be a funeral.
felled trees bleeding out 
with no one trained in this.
i had a lesson on packing a gun shot wound
at work. no matter what
someone is going to become
a monument & we don't want that.
sometimes obelisks grow 
in the basement of my parent's house.
my father grinds them down
& uses them as salt. he says,
"a bone a day keeps the stink bugs
away." it doesn't work. they craw 
along every windowsill in the house. 

orchard

i grew my face like a winesap.
pruned the feathers
from my hair. walked until
i found the planet
where all of our teeth 
are waiting in the dirt 
for us to be born. i was 
an adult blossom. i was a fruiting story.
i walk between the lines
of baby doll heads. arsenic seeds
that dazzle & wink. i have swallowed
enough forecasts to be
the harbinger. i wear gloves 
when i pluck a soul 
from its knot. they are always
inky & stain anything they touch.
brushing fur. soothing
our little beasts. do not worry
there will be other bodies.
a man will come to the tree 
& speak its language. wearing 
a moon on our head. wade into
water fountains. we each have
just one tree. the souls that come
every year no matter the frost
or the fire. they will have 
as much color as you need.
an octopus poet. a courier eagle. 
pocket knife in the throat
of our heavens. this is 
the returning phantom. do not say 
you have never been to paradise.

how to milk a cow

give over eight eyelashes.
forget the moon. fight a bull
in the dark of a bloodied photo booth. 
drink with you hands 
from a river of fleas.
kneel in the field of syringes
& pray for abalone. a pocket bible
can be held directly to
the cow's head. you can tell
the cow they are saved which is
to some, a speech act. a transformation.
unlike humans though
the cows do not believe 
in speech acts. they believe only in
what can be felt. their alchemy
is one of fire into gold.
they meet when the sun is dead.
circling up, they open their mouths
to release silk into the night sky.
stars winking as if to say,
"we all have a secret." the milk 
will taste like turnips & forest.
it will make you stronger. no one
will be able to take away your heart.
that little closet of orphaned gloves.
the cow will spit out
a spare pair of eyes. use them wisely
on a day where everything seems
to be made of funeral. you will
open your eyes & see butter. 

waiting

the centipede truth is
that there are too many people
who know the truth.
sometimes i walk
in the obelisk garden
carrying a sickle & a brown paper bag.
when i was a child 
a man the size of a truck
would come & steal my lunch box
every day. i thought of it
not as theft but as paying a toll.
are you paying rent
for living in your body?
i know that i am. i try to eat
as a guard dog does. just enough
to stay alive. in the garden 
you can harvest stone.
i do so with my bare hands.
blood knuckles. blood bones.
the truth is a place where birds hit windows.
where a father is not a father
but a burn pile of all your fingers.
a shower curtain turned 
into a stage curtain. i make 
a debut. i have a pile in the yard 
where i dump my teeth. i am a shark.
i am a windmill. there should be
a timer that lives above our heads
that tells us when it will be safe
to say everything. it will never
be safe to say everything. 
i put my tongue in a canary cage
& walk into a coal mine. 
the earth has a stomach 
of diamonds & rush.
a vein of water. the well in the yard
coughing up spiders. 
dear self, you are not waiting,
i release you from your elevator.
let's not be a pond singer.
put the bones in a backpack 
& throw it over the side 
of the bridge. tell the garden,
"i have never been here before,"
especially if you have. 

night eating

i shovel coal into the moonlight 
until it is buried. my tongue
has centipede legs. my teeth,
each a sugar cube. you ask me
why i feast alone & i tell you
i have a snow globe city i need to keep alive.
they are counting on me.
the day has too many eyes.
eyes in every spoon. eyes in the cupboard
& the closet & the sidewalk.
at night everything shuts. lock
the front door. in my parents' house
i used to sneak downstairs.
wading through television static
there would be the fruit on the counter
& the last box of generic oreos
in the drawer. placing the angel's face
on my tongue. letting her feet melt there.
i do not want to be nocturnal
but i also know that i am. it is
part of my migration. a journey
from one bowl to the next. 
there is a dietician hiding behind
the shower curtain. i carry a knife 
of just-in-case. i am not violent
but i am violet. light 
of the fridge door. let's not
speak of this meeting. let's pretend 
we just came here to plant a cherry tree.
here is the seed. here is my throat.
come & pick a trowel. 
i will tell them you are helping me. 
there is always cake 
to make it a birthday. i'll be as old 
as you want me to be.