pilot school

i used to want to fly an angel 
into the dish washer
so that i could be a chalice.
as children,
we would stand & count planes
as they crashed 
into the quarry. in flight
a body is turned into a private heaven.
do not let me land. teach me
what kind of skulls 
helium balloons carry.
my last girlfriend tried
to become an angel. she stood outside
every single day with a lighter
in her mouth & a sigil painted
on her back. she said,
"it's too expensive to become
a pilot." her goggles. 
the rushing winds. she stood there
all through a hurricane & a blizzard.
we do so much waiting 
for the stars to align. only,
the stars have never once aligned.
instead, they are the crooked tooth garden.
i do not have a solution
other than to remove any thoughts
of birds. i dig a neck-deep hole & stand in it.
there, i am flying. from the plane window
i drop little butterfly wings worth
of wishes. call the earth a well.
i put on my angel costume. 
throw the dishwasher in the yard 
with the other vortexes. 
feed the black hole a wedding ring
to keep it happy. 
against all odds,
i have not lost hope of aviation. 

dead cardinal 

i didn't know what to do with the red
so i made it into a kitchen knife
& walked it down to the old church.
there they use birds as hymnals.
an oak tree grows through the altar
& the altar boys are deer.
i stroked the red's face & remembered
what it was like to die. a searching
through azure pinwheel & then
a window. we bake pies until 
our fingers fall off. they are offerings 
for the red. apples & peaches & lemon.
the crusts golden brown. cracked earth.
my teeth as jupiter beetles & june bugs.
birch tree bark. broken bone.
the red used to sing from a sling shot.
used to hurl skulls at the attic.
whatever it used to do will have to be
taken up by the children.
we take notes on the backs of our hands 
but run out of space & thus
write the rest of the instructions
on our tongues. read the weather
for me. read the tea leaves. 
take the suite cases down
to the edge of the road. the red was 
a comfort or else maybe just a doorknob.
i would come & it would eat from
my hands. little folded beak. 
a moment between inverted gods.
feathers in my mouth. i make 
a thousand promises it wasn't me.
the red died of wanting a moon
to love & eat. don't we all? 

pet store

i looked for dead fish 
in the blue tanks at the back
of the pet store. counted them
on my fingers, holding
the digits up to report back
to my father.
we were there to buy crickets
to feed to our grandfather
who slept in a knot
in the basement. 
bubbling miniature oceans.
found myself 
inside the tanks unable to breathe.
the wall sucking fish
giving a good side-eye to the world.
i spat colorful pebbles
from my mouth. everything is about
containment. who has 
crafted the wall 
& who finds it beautiful &
who is terrified of it.
i always imagined being rich
& buying all the aquariums.
loading them all into the back
of my father's jeep 
& driving to the river
to let the fish free. i made the mistake
of telling this to my father once.
he said, "they would all die
from the shock of the new water."
i told him he was wrong.
after all i did not die 
from all the different plastic worlds
i ended up in. my father's hands.
my school full of neon talking.
the kitchen where every vessel
was full of butter. if i could live
then why wouldn't they? a lesson
in survival poetics. 
i always left the pet store
with the ghosts of the counted fish.
a little flock of betas. a herd
of minnows. soft goldfish shadows.
my own stomach in a fishbowl. 
ceramic treasure chest & 
fake seaweed sitting at the bottom. 
a few times we took one home.
named them like holidays. 
"goodbye" & "forever midnight."
i put my face to the glass 
& said, "i will find a way
for us to both be pigeons."
the fish would look away.

free stone peach

i was made to have my heart removed
without a fight.
my sinews like chickadee words 
gone into their tinsel.
not enough winter to make
the peach trees ring.
i put the stone in your mouth & walk
as far as your legs will carry you
into an archway of ribs.
i did not put up a fight. why did i
not wrestle the milk in the moon?
why did i not show my claws?
instead, i let him at my guts
like a feed trough. pigs with their 
wild blackberrying eyes. teeth
falling out as they feast. giving you
exactly what you asked for.
the men who stand at any butter dish
& count the flies as coins.
you took me for the bird feeder i was.
underneath the oak tree 
that's now just a ghost throat. 
i could have made you a necklace 
from all my fingerbones 
i lost to your can opener. let's not
blame everything on hunger. instead,
let's look at conquest. whose body
is named & orchard & what
the orchard trees call themselves.
i am the water worker. sugar's last name.
you were just a thumb pressed
through flesh, searching
for the amulet. for the heart.
there mine was. already loose. 

legs

i traded my fingers
for a new pair of legs.
they ran like wild dogs
all night until
i reached a lighthouse.
everyone has their butcher block.
the cleaver with a grin
taped into place.
my father once
had me get up on all fours
for him to inspect
my bovine. a fallen bird
is taken into the dirt. 
the dirt makes a feather tree
where we can go & pay respects 
to times we lost our softness.
i think it can be dangerous
to think to yourself,
"if only i had different limbs."
i do this though. i imagine
a body that would call me
to sprint from one scar to
the next. instead i am a sea
of appendages. i fish for my tongue.
i have a net to collect my toes.
minnowing blood. the moon
sewn back into the body.
that wayward organ. i bless my legs.
i tell them i was lying when
i talked to the foxes about bartering
for new ones.
no fresh escapes for me. just my
beautiful bruised & blooming legs.
i hug my knees to my chest.
come, let's go & laugh with the embers
of the polished sun. let's pretend
until we believe we are whole.
i trip again in the yard. tumble.
lay in the earth until a woodpecker arrives
in the tree above my head 
to say, "you are a violin boy."
i cannot tell if he means it as an insult. 

forklift

we're going to need
the father machine
to pick up all these wings.
go on & talk to
whatever god we have
in the grease works.
my dad's dad was a pair
of hands. they both fed the beast
until the beast was 
a part of their language.
he has a forked tongue
& on the wrong nights
so do i. i will go
& pick up pallets
with my wanting. a warehouse
is a kind of organism. 
the dragon's lair.
to consume is to hold.
pennies plucked
from underneath lovers' tongues.
he kissed me a metal goodnight.
we played in the oil garden.
somedays i wondered barefoot
in a tongue no one else
could speak. the motor lights.
the angelic humming.
come & family me back
into the thrall. i do not want
to be a single earring even though
i most certainly am. which side
is the gay ear again? it doesn't matter.
if you're a ghost
you're a ghost & that's that.
if you're a man you're
a forklift. if you're a woman well
who knows. don't get me started
on angels. i eat some kickballs
fresh from the can. 
the scattering is too far gone.
we shouldn't worry about mess now
we should just worry about discovery.
when the light will pour in
& tell us to stop chewing. 
i used to fly you know?
i flew not like a bat but 
like a red tail hawk. i could 
pluck eyelashes from the clouds. 
i was no one's filament. 

manner school

i put a napkin in my lap to catch
the falling men. it always starts
with your family. my father 
& my uncle. 
at the diner everyone 
is a politeness lesson. 
the small fork goes in your soul
& the big fork is for picking up hair.
my uncle loved to teach me
how to be a perfection.
touching the tops of my knees
& scolding me to close my legs.
i have always been 
a gender without any keys.
balancing a dictionary of fingers
on my head. i wore frills 
that turned into gills.
i ate french fries with a fork & knife.
somehow it is never good enough.
i would come home 
from lunch with him 
& think, "you must be
a monster." in the mirror
my eyes turned to sunny-side-up eggs.
bacon tongue. i tried to wipe away
all the grease. my wrists becoming 
saucers. i carried all the weight of wanting.
wanting a daughter ghost. wanting
a pristine devouring. there is
always blood & guts & gore.
it just depends on who is washed
& who does the washing.
i took my gender to the backyard 
& put pine cones in his hair.
we learn to shape shift.
here is my proper gender.
my grilled cheese face. then, 
in the dark of my bedroom
i get to be the biggest ugliest spoon. 

hypochondriac 

did you know you can die of flowers?
they grow in your throat
& then you are 
the wrong kind of boy.
do i have "catastrophic" written
in my blood vessels?
i want to be tested for angels.
they have named diseases 
after our hopes & fantasies 
how am i supposed to walk around
& not wonder about 
the kinds of fires that might
be stoked by my hunger?
i go to a clinic where i am sure 
i am dead. they assure me i am not dead
even though all the other clients
are ghosts. they say,
"we need to rule out
all other possibilities."
i pour my blood into a chalice.
i spit onto a pocket knife.
the doctors excavate my purple
& determine it is specifically 
mauve. i knew it. i knew it
when i was awake at night,
heart as a bullfrog. i chased 
the organ down the hall.
they determine 
after everything
that i am making it up.
my arm falls off & becomes 
an infant. they say, 
"that can happen
to people like you."
i no longer want a cure. i just want
to be seen. i want a god
to come down & say
"your pain is so clear
it is made of glass." when the flowers come
i welcome them. violets 
& lilacs. first from the roof
of my mouth
& then from between my teeth. 

waiting room

some days i find a doctor
in my mailbox & he is promising
to make me into a bird.
i rehearse the prophecy,
"i have not slept for twenty-eight years."
count my fingers to remind myself
i still have something to grasp 
a bell with. on the television
there is always a man saying
more than he should. a tongue 
as a salamander. i overturn rocks
in the yard looking for prescriptions.
all my pill grow legs & live as beetles.
in the kitchen this morning 
i got on my knees 
to catch just one. a magazine
promises that everyone can be 
as thin as a lollipop leg.
white women with white teeth
& white shirts. i try to imagine
a life here. setting up a tent 
in the waiting room. starting
a fire. roasting ears of corn 
& feasting right in front
of the receptionist. instead
i cross my legs & my arms. 
try to pass the time by counting
angels i see falling out 
the one big window overlooking
a swampy field. when they come
the nurse is not a nurse
but a heron. i'm instantly comforted.
she's holding a blue balloon
which is another relief.
a red balloon is always a bad sign.
i almost don't want
to follow her, i've made 
such a little nest in this thicket.
the magazines become moths.
even the man on the television
stops talking. he scowls 
& waits for me to get up & follow her. 

squirrel meat 

don't tell me you're not a carnivore.
i saw you with a disaster 
in your mouth crawling
up the ankle of a fresh god.
sometimes i will go to the market
just to see my insides.
me, the cow walking towards
the bolt. do you know that's how
they do it? an axis through 
the brain? the earth itself
is the skull of a devoured calf. 
two-hearted beasts in their caverns.
i was once a survival. i crouched
in the throat of a mammoth.
the creature told me 
"if you hold still we will
find ourselves in a museum."
my people have fingers that turn
into birds. my people have
shake the walruses for their manna.
i will tell the truth. the squirrels
taste like gold. they are full
of coins & televisions.
who knew so much could fit
inside such a tiny body.
i say, "you know we 
are animals?" & the room 
runs away from itself. i saw
a tree of eyes. "oftentimes"
is my favorite crutch word 
to get me to say something
that is always true. there is 
always meat. i went strawberry picking
& found each fruit beating
like heart. blood on my fingers.
the squirrels, like messengers,
delivering a gospel of seeds.