vending machine 

i shake the hunger box.
smell of bat blood & buttercup voices.
the machine says,
"i know you are really a girl."
i say, "i know you are
really an angel."
plastic is a way of saying
"let's not spend too much time here."
passing through town.
when i was a waitress i met
so many people who ate stop signs.
they were ravenous & then
would always send their meals back.
if you don't believe me
there's a scar underneath my tongue
from trying to talk to 
a strange man. sometimes i wake up
in the middle of the night
& find a vending machine
in the corner of my bedroom.
i announce that i am not hungry
but the machine just creeps forward.
coins pour from my mouth
& i try to shove them back in.
despite our best efforts
we're all made of money 
which is another way of saying
made of our own survival.
i try to picture a world where
we don't have to eat our fingers
until there are none left.
i give in & buy a little heart
from the portal. the heart tastes
like raspberry & chocolate. 
i want another & another
& i have enough coins to do so.
who needs self-restraint when the void 
is ripe & ready? when 
all you need to do is beg? 

beakless

you insisted, "that is a bird"
but i think i know what a dead summer looks like.
eyes like crawfish.
halos of snakes. 
we ate supper 
from silkworm knots
beneath the telephone trees.
i tried to speak for days
& nothing came out but flies.
gnats & then those thick flies
that look like punctuation
or blueberries. you were patient at first
but then it was too much.
you threw the globe at me
& then the binoculars.
i used them to look for birds.
i thought, "there has to be just one."
none of them had beaks anymore.
still, i heard them singing.
the beaks had run off 
to become new kinds of escape.
the birds were left
no longer birds
but husks 
of their former taxonomy.
i approached one slowly.
put my hand 
where the beak should be.
i nodded, as if to say, "speak."
the bird called.
it was a mourning dove. 
the call rung through me
& i saw my voice as 
a flock of dandelions
or then as a syringe
full of gold. let the not-bird go.
you later you continued,
"i know that was a bird."
i still did not respond.
i just filled my mouth with feathers
& spat them out the window
when you weren't looking.
i pretended i was leaving 
the nest. there i go. scattered. 

ghost furniture 

i plead with you until you let me
leave a chair open for visitors. 
the rocking one with the gnarled cushion. 
we were going to throw it away. 
a pile of shoes spills from the hall closet
that wasn't there last night. leather heels
& slippers. i put them in a garbage bag. 
in the morning you are weeping
standing on the stairs. you say,
"i keep remembering." i distract you
with a television the size of my palm.
birds roost beneath the bed. i tell you
about the woman with cherries for eyes.
we go to her where she lives 
inside the well door with spiders. she is not there.
you tell me you believe me even though
i can tell you're scared. it is august when
you get rid of the chair. this house is hot.
dead air conditioner still coughing
in the window. you say,
"this is our house." i tell you,
"every space is shared." you are sick
of the visitors. i build doll house chairs.
the guests return. the chairs multiply.
become actual size. isn't that how it always is? 
a fixation is the size of your thumb 
& then you have a living room too crowded with chairs 
to imagine sitting. then the shoes. 
even more than before.
they topple from drawers & down the stairs.
"i didn't want this," you say &
it is midnight & i wanted to sleep hours ago.
the radio plays & we beg for it to shut off.
sometimes a dad rock station & other times
opera vibrating the spine of the place.
"it was you," you say one morning
while we sit on the ground in the quiet.
the sun has cat eyes. the road outside 
is made of fire. "it was," i admit. 
"i was lonely." 

hypnos 

i filled my dresser with snakes
at the old apartment. i was lonely
& snakes were the only thing
that would come to mind.
i had no one to be or do 
& yet i could still never sleep.
i stayed up all night. put my mouth
to the shower drain & tried to talk to
octopi who might feel empty too.
once, in a pleading let-me-sleep fit
i sacrified a cave cricket. the cricket 
turned instantly into a telephone
& it rang like mad. i knew
if i picked it up my whole family's ghosts
would be on the other line.
you should be wary that ghosts can come
even when someone isn't dead.
i have seen my own ghosts. 
they creaked floor boards &
turned the television on. they ate
the bread i baked on the equinox. 
upstairs, my neighbors spit at each other.
the snakes, still snakes, would sometimes
stop moving & just be shoe laces.
i wept at the snakes & begged them
to not tease me. i craved their company.
their writhing. they feed off my stray eyes
that wandered in the dark as mice.
at night there are no gods. when i left
the apartment i didn't want
to open the drawers. instead, i lugged
the whole dresser to the cub. 
i kissed each handle. i said,
"goodbye snakes." the snakes said,
"you are a coward." in that moment
they were right. i could not even
take apart that life. i left it. a severed limb.
do you know how many times
i have done this? shedding everything i can.
my car, a getaway car. a ghost there
standing on the ceiling. smell of mildew.
my socks lodged still in the guts
of the dryer. you can never go back. 

magickal thinking

there is a tulip in the space shuttle
trying to talk to me.
sometimes i will move my hand
& worry i have caused
a car accident. i never asked 
to have god blood. an ancestor
hundreds of years ago
bit the neck of goat 
& drank until he was holy. 
or else maybe he sacrificed 
a finger, i never remember. 
all i know is that the mailbox 
has been spreading lies about me.
once, for weeks, i thought 
the old ladies at the bus station
were waiting for me to leave
in order to start talking 
about my hands. i look for evidence
my thoughts are real. to be an oracle 
is to dig wells wherever you can.
as a child i was furious
& broke every fallen twig i could find.
that overturned a yard tree.
paintings fall from walls. doors
off hinges. i like to be 
a little wonderfully deranged.
i know if i were born in a different time
or just in a different place
there might be special kinds
of lock boxes for me. there might be
machines to try to unwind me 
from my skeleton. instead, i wander.
bless everything blue. 
i try to talk to glasses of water
& sometimes they talk back. there is
so much wisdom in the mundane.
everything is a symbol 
if you have a head made of jupiter beetles.
i catch the sun just right.
glint. gleam. then open my wings 
& fly in my madness. 

dust worship

i grind my teeth into sandbox. 
all the children bury themselves
& become plastic dinosaurs.
poetry is magick because it also
is always about transformation.
no one walks into a day & doesn't leave
on their reptile hands & knees 
praying to the shoe gravel.
once i spent a year living in someone's ear.
or was it their tongue? the two
can become the same & then you are
screaming, "fuck you" in an empty house.
sometimes a word would arrive
& i would have to kill it with
the fly swatter so none of us 
turned into a plastic bag.
please don't try to tell me
that you love me. i don't want
to be loved in this poem. i want 
to go outside & let a mosquito bite me.
watch my arm swell like there's
a pearl underneath the flesh.
then, work all week to release that pearl.
everything precious is prone to escape.
i build a shrine to dust. the wind comes
& takes the dust away. i start
inventing evil contraptions
that might prevent a future exodus 
but then i remember living on a tongue.
how it could be a dove or a snake
or a slide whistle depending on the day.
you cannot cage each grain.
the dust will do what it does.
it will leave & it will return to the floors
of the house. i lay on the hardwood.
put my ear to the dirt. i hear
it singing. a throat full of beads & pearls.
my blood is a shoe kicked on 
the side of the stair to get the mud off.
when you closed your lips
i used to see a moon on the ceiling
of your mouth. i thought
i could build a ladder of dust.
reach up & touch it. i imagined 
it as the texture of a honeydew
i never reached it though.

no toll roads

i no longer believe in gas stations.
i drive the car until it's a bucket
full of fish. park it & keep walking.
the highway says,
"motor vehicles only"
but i am an engine. i am 
an angel's little machine.
once, i accidentally put in directions
to new york city 
without any tolls. the trip was
eight hours when it was usually two
or three & it was too late
to change course
by the time i noticed. i thought about
how roads are false veins
laid like scribbles in the earth's
blood. turning around & around 
to point the right direction.
headlights boring holes
in the night's overdue veil.
the car died more than once
& i had to restart it. praying
to the gods of guts & gears.
there was no one else in the world
for those hours. only the twist
& the pinch of distance. 
i marveled at my gps.
asked aloud to no one
"what did people do before this?"
i wish there was more time
to be lost. i have not been lost enough.
i do remember print out directions. 
my mother pointing to an exit 
as my father drove us
to the beach for the day.
when i finally arrived 
i kneeled & kissed to the asphalt.
there were angels outside my apartment
eating the fingers of anyone 
who passed by. i offered mine willingly.
i said, "i do not believe in gas stations."
not anymore. devouring a fish raw,
the angel said, "you are not home."
angels never lie. i slept in my car
& pretended all night
i was floating down 
an afterlife river. 

motion activated light

i will know when you're home.
the geese will cut off their heads
& their bodies will fly south.
i don't have to tell you it's winter.
dead trees. coiled-fist leaves.
the television will spit rotten strawberries
from its mouth. i will not be able
to sleep. starting at the door
with an axe in my hand. 
for me the past is a place full 
of hay. mold & dampness. 
the driveway of my parent's house
used to have a lamp that spat light
when i returned. it pulled a shadow
from my shoulders like taffy.
trucks going way too fast 
down the country road. road kill machines.
the rabbits would trip the light too.
their little skeletons. once, a rabbit
who was struck by a car. the rabbit limped
& then turned into a bible. 
i have a hard time being holy
even if i'm dying. i brought carrots
to the bible. i prayed the rabbit would return.
tripping the light over & over.
you, my father, yelling, "stay still."
i froze in the glow. waited for the light
to stop. convinced myself i could
move so slowly the sensor
could not see me. i crawled 
for hours the short distance back home. invisible.
i felt accomplished. i know by the taste
of the water. the milk in the sky.
you always slammed doors. did you do that
to trip the light? did you look
for your shadow? did you pause
in the driveway & marvel at it?
when you are home i do not want to be.
i slip myself into the darkness
& make prayers to rabbits & doorknobs.
you are not home not at all. a home
is defined as your absence. here,
the lights do not search for bodies.
here, it is just my bones & my myriad of shadows.
i sit outside on a tree stump by the ghost moon.
headless geese fly overhead. 

every icarus

& the joke of it is
the sun is just a basement dart board.
this is a story about
who is a father & who gets
to be fathered. i worked
for hours in my bedroom
trying to build a pair
of working wings. i spit 
on my hands. i prayed
with saint cards. i sewed
stray pigeon feathers 
to form garlands. wrapping myself
like roadkill. all the while
my father stood in the doorway.
he took a steak knife
& carved "ungrateful"
into the wall or was that
my thigh? a thigh & a wall
are similar just like
an ocean & a driveway are similar
& a fall & kneeling.
i always knew i was going to
plummet. this is what happens
when you try to put masculinity 
in between your teeth.
i screamed, "mine mine mine"
as if i could wrench it 
from my father's throat.
he is the axe by the door. 
he is why birds die suddenly 
mid-flight. i am not a bird though.
i am a cherry tree or a loose veil cloud
or a boy just like every other boy
who lives inside a stained glass house.

ice road

i have no idea where
my manhood is going.
he's got cargo.
he's eating bbq ribs 
as he drives
& licking his fingers.
once, i shot him through the head
but he just kept going. for me
a gender is always something hunted.
i carry a pitch fork.
i set traps. i'll try 
the nice guy routine &
i'll put on a football game
& pretend to be watching.
yes we could get along.
maybe this is a place i could
settle into. then something brushes
my skin wrong & i am running again.
he needs to be useful.
that is his biggest flaw. 
utility should never
be sacrificed for glamour.
glamour is where
the witchcraft is.
he chooses roads of ice.
headlight like blooming skulls.
chewing the inside
of his mouth. everything is
a close call. a wife on the line.
the wife is me. i stand at the sink
& see the snow coming down.
manhood is not coming home tonight.
relief pours over me.
i get to be giddy. i get to be
empty of delivery. instead 
i get to eat the ceiling again.
when he gets home he'll ask,
"how did this happen?"
i'll wipe my chin & say,
"i was hungry 
& you weren't here."