consulting the cards

i don't want to know the truth.
give me the cryptic ending.
there will be angels as pizza delivery drivers.
i clip my toe nails into the toilet 
while on the phone with
my ex father. he says
he misses me & i think,
"yeah i bet you miss 
having someone to chew on."
i plant my ears 
beneath the sycamore.
the sycamore groans & tries
to dig them up. no one wants
to hear what i hear. a chain saw.
a choking rabbit. a glass
dropped on the kitchen floor.
there are still shards of glass
deep in the flesh of my feet.
why don't i make a fortune emergency?
i plug the phone into a sap scab.
vibrating sun. false teeth in the mail
& coming soon (thank god).
there are not enough drivers
to complete your ressurection.
instead, i lay here 
in the freshly mowed yard 
& i think about turkish delight.
how i've never had it & probably never will.
sugar on my fingers.
my father is on the way 
or so he says
& i laugh at him because
he doesn't know where
to be on the way to. 
i could tell you
the cards promise a lit match
& a feast of quail eggs. i could tell you
they are showing a squirrel funeral.
it's all more or less the same.
the future has a piece of sinew 
in its mouth. my father is
not here. i am free to a good home. 

bildungsroman with strawberries & an ice pick 

we are too old to be children.
i steal the atmosphere 
& you steal the gun. 
i am falling in love 
too fast again
& we are in time square & 
i do not want to know who i am.
poetry is better
when it's not being sold.
that is why i sold videos
of my teeth online. 
there is always a part of your body
that will need to belong
to another.
this is for survival. 
when you spend too long
adhering to tenants you do not believe in
there is a rushing out of the self.
i washed the feet of men.
they told me i would make
a wonderful boy.
an antique market
on the side of the road 
where we ate grocery store strawberries
& made too many promises.
boyhood is a place where
all the pocket knives are born.
i would watch them emerge 
unbidden from the palm
of the man's hand. 
he refused to weep. we are driving 
away from our life & pretending
we have another. a hotel in the sky.
it lasts too long. you read me poems.
we argue about everything.
it is easy to fall out of love
when you have no money
& only jars of your own blood.
unscrewing the lid
to take a sip. garnet lips.
i used the rest of mine to buy you flowers.
they turned out to be
carnivorous. 
love me until
i am dust. rusted ice pick
i keep in my trunk. it wasn't for you.
it was for the winter. 
winter has six fingers. has a fourth
& fifth eye. frost on the windows.
waiting on your porch.
each breath a cloud. an angel.
do not believe for one second
you have become a human.
it is a process without an arrival.
here is where i learn 
to swallow a whole necklace. here is
where you apologize without apologizing.
i lock the door that night.
text god, "i am not your son."
no answer. you call eigthy-two times
& i finally pick up. 

feather pillow

all through the night
there are starlings.
"look a chickadee"
you say & then i'm there
standing on the bed
with a blow torch 
in my hand.
put it down slowly. 
i was the one
who went out to the coop
to pick the chicken.
grabbed them & stuffed them
into the nightmare.
we must eat to survive
or so i am told.
there are animals
who don't. butterflies
without mouths. 
i do not want to live
this life if it is only
going to be darknesses
like this. sometimes
i cut out my tongue
just to watch it grow back.
slug factory. 
i do not know
if there is a place i could sleep
in the way i want to.
there used to be
the old apartment.
with sun coming in 
every window. i did that
for you though. i didn't 
do that for me. tell me please
what does it look like
inside a feather?
is everyone laying down
& looking up 
through the leaves of a tree?
is everyone sick & in bed?
the pillow was not as comfortable
as you might think.
instead it felt 
like a body bag. i breathed in
the animal. tossed & turned.
a pocket full of change.
i want to lie down
but the birds keep plucking
at my strings & propping me upright.
wake up. wake up. wake up. 
i am the birds of course.

firework harvest

when was the last time your father
was your father? i was at a county fair
& i was a snail. he held me in his hand
& said, "i love my daughter."
sometimes a touch is a site
of fire. i watch the man run
with his red flaming baton 
to light the bed posts & send them 
into the sky. why has it taken me
so long to remember exactly 
all the places i have been severed?
once in a poetry workshop
a classmate lamented
"nothing has ever happened
to me" by which they meant,
"how am i supposed to write poetry
without trauma?" the truth is 
the county is fair is a place we've all been.
everyone has a father like mine.
one without eyes when it's convenient.
when you realize the truth 
is a lemon tree you have to buy 
a shovel. you have to go & talk
to the snails you once were.
rid yourself of salt. when was
the last time you begged? 
i don't enjoy the word "trauma"
i think it's used too broadly
to mean "bruising." i don't have
trauma i have a firework harvest.
i have a fire i walk with in my hands
& anything could light the sky up
with a flash of sound. i love my father
even though he one ate me
like funnel cake. once licked
his fingers. how is a girl supposed to
resist turning into a snail?
i watched the fireworks with him.
i always watch
the fireworks with him. 
gold & red & green. i swore once
i saw one that was blue
but maybe it was just
a ribbon cake. do not limit
the ways you write. do not believe
for one second that pain
is delicious. it is electric.
it is enduring & edible. 
i want to tell my classmate,
"would you like to borrow
my father?" 

field mice

the bed is full of girlhood
by which i mean fear.
a gender is always
a synonym for an emotion. 
the field mice are boy tonight.
monster machine comes
to cut the corn 
& they run to our house.
talking in the hallway
the mice say,
"in another life 
i was a headlight."
lately i do not believe
in true anything.
there's no true genders
or no true morning or
no true family. this is 
horrible or freeing 
or both. it's always both
but i'm bisexual so 
i just always say that.
there might not even be
a true conscious.
it's fun to believe that maybe 
my words are not my words
by a sum of a lot of water
& salt & pepper. 
i make a little dinner
for the field mice 
& tell no one. i tell them,
"i am a boy too."
they rejoice & we have
a boyhood party. then they 
are gone & i am in bed
talking about terror again.
you are talking about
a paranoia of mice 
in the mattress.
i feel for them & find 
my first lipstick.
crush it in my hand 
before you can see.
it's cruel how the season comes back.
always a girl or a boy
or a girl or a boy. when i say
i'm neither i do not think
i'm much different 
than anyone else. i am just
charting those changes.
most people walk through them
like a fallow field.
i talk to mice. i let them
in my bed. 

funnel cake crown

i'm not that kind of beautiful.
i am in the fryer letting my skin
turn flakey & full. a bruise is a place 
to plant the future continent.
a living ground for meal worms 
& fathers we get to burry.
i do not want to be treated
like a dessert anymore.
running through the house
tracking powdered sugar everywhere.
there is always a war going on
even if it's just in a snow globe
to you. once i saw a man
fist fighting another man
on the sidewalk outside my window.
a tooth fell free from one of the men's mouths.
after the glass candy sirens
i went down in search for it.
i wanted a souvenir. but there are
other kinds of beautiful i could be
if you wanted. if you wanted
is something i say when i mean
i want you so badly i am turning
into a sawmill & cutting off my fingers.
i stop talking to my mother.
she becomes a quilt mice nest in.
the apartment is a refrigerator box
& then it's a dance studio &
then i buy an aquarium so large
it takes up the space of my heart.
sometimes someone does something
so bad to you that you have to
just operate as if it never happened.
i do not believe in death but i have
been dead at least once. 
i call for delivery. it's a pizza 
i'm going to feed to a bear. 
you tell me you are sick of people
saying sorry. the word is my beautiful slug.
i carry it into a salt field & say,
"we are going to be okay"
when i am certain the word is not.

grease trap

don't twist your guts at me.
i am only the knife sharpener.
i've never even eaten
a fried twinkie. do you know
on other planets
they don't worry
about calories & fat?
they just eat until they are
complete. once i sat outside
a mcdonalds & counted swans
as they swum down the interstate.
everything in the united states
happens on the side
of a road. we see a train & i remember
taking the train to work in the city.
my eyes often fell out 
& instead of putting them back in
i would eat a protein bar
that tasted vaguely of birthday cake.
the grind is sad & so is the grease.
i didn't mean to stop talking
to everyone it just was easier that way
& then i was free to set any fire
i had been waiting to. i do not enjoy
any fried food except when 
it is in my mouth. there i can 
remember the fryers at the back
of the malt shop. a bubbling grease stain.
how the grease became a god
in the throat of the contraption.
cleaning the gunk & livers
from its teeth. this is what it takes
to spit out a golden necklace. this is
what it takes to choke on
a planet. i am terrible at chewing.
instead, i swallow as much as i can.
my hunger is hapless & often rude.
don't mind me. i am not 
trying to make the best of anything.
i'm trying to unclog the machine
& see it flow with water. 
i'm trying to call home
& have the home be a different home 
entirely. one without mornings.
one with a toaster perpetually dinging
to say, "we are ready for you." 

self-portrait as a self-portrait 

i want you to lie with me
& tell me i am the creature of mice & weeds,
not a boy without an urn.
i have used tupperware
to carry my heart into a new bed.
every year since i turned seventeen,
i have moved at least once a year. 
in the long run, this is just one more.
a box for my hands that i kick
along the floor. a box for my tongue
filled with packing tape.
you stand inside the one
perfect pupil i have left. the other one
burst like a balloon.
i was playing with pins. if i have a home
it is not something i can dig for anymore.
instead, i take pictures of myself
in the yard. look up pocket knives online
so that i can really dig at the earth.
in a dream i am late for a flight.
sitting in a hotel room bed
i think, "i could live here." 
all my lives like unnested nesting dolls.
just tell me where the freezer is
& tell me what i mean to you.
give me a polaroid & a pill.
my bones sing to eachother.
i order an uber & then charge my mind.
i do not want to try 
to go back tonight. standing outside
the hospital with my lungs in a briefcase.
i called & called & no one came.
sometimes the false memories
are the ones that are truest. or else
i am just a liar & this is not my body at all
& soon i will move again. 

spore print

i ask you why we know
so little about mushrooms 
& you say, "i think people
are scared of them."
it's early evening
& i follow you through
the ferns & the forest brush.
i feel a kinship with mushrooms
because it is a queer feeling
to be delightfully misunderstood. 
rotted logs. swarms of beetles.
from here grows purple mushrooms 
& white mushrooms & mushrooms
that look like alien hearts.
we looked for mushrooms the first time
we went into the woods together.
you bend down. touch the neck
of a mushroom. pluck them
from the earth. turn caps over
in your hands. a finger
across gills. for a long time
this was as close as i could get
to kissing you. watching how
you undo the soil & the earth. 
now, i take your hand.
kiss your shoulder. we smell
like bug spray & dead leaves 
& i love it & i always want more.
i want to say, "can we live
off only mushrooms?"
in the cabin
you show me how 
one mushroom repairs 
its own gills with a latex.
you hold your pocket knife 
& taste the bitter secretion,
spitting it out in the sink.
you tell me none of them
are edible.
a basket of mushrooms.
i picture their spores 
like tiny altar bells. 
you lay each cap down 
on a piece of paper. cover them
with another. a blanket
for the mushroom skulls.
when i lay next to you i feel like this.
like a mushroom cap 
laying down all 
the language i have. the mushrooms
& face down saying,
"i love you i love you
i love you" along with me.

life inside a telescope

i'm interested in selling
parts of my body when i'm dead.
i'd like to see my ear
in someone's windowsill.
they might look at it & say,
"i should get rid of that"
but instead they hang on.
this is how i live my life.
every time i move i become aware
of just how many books i have
that i have never opened again
since reading. in my last house
i only had one pan. 
upstairs a man listened 
to the radio & the radio said,
"i don't want to be your daughter
anymore." i have been looking
too closely at everyone.
a lens is a horror factory. 
do you know half the people
i talk to are only reciting lines
from television shows?
do you know we all have pimples?
i thought everyone else
walked around with dinner-plate-smooth
cheeks. no! even the beautiful people
have pimples they're hiding.
i am not sure if i want to sell my eyes.
they feel the most intimate.
maybe i will have them 
put into raviolis. i've been
obsessed with butternut squash recently.
if we really needed to
i think we could probably 
eat moths for protein.
a huge one flies into the house
& i chase it as if it is 
a piece of my face. i think
my nose would go for the most money though.
someone might mount it
like a deer head.
do people hunt where you live?
they do here. a deer is 
a site of reconciliation.
when i see them. i tell them to run.