neighbor poem

i do not know the names
of any of our neighbors. 
they have little terrarium lives.
i collect brief intimacies:
the woman picking up dog poop
on fridays & the teenage son
blasting music late at night. his match box car
up & out of the driveway. 
the argument between him &
his step father. 
i don't always practice what i preach.
i tell others, "get to know you neighbors."
when i lived in the city, i did know
my neighbors. we talked 
in the apartment hallway
& sometimes on the front steps.
we bitched about the landlord. 
once, i baked lackluster bread
& shared it with the old man
who listened to the radio too loud. 
i try to understand our neighbors.
no american flags which is a relief. no
political signs. which is
a relief. the corn field behind us
like the ruffles of a wild skirt. 
there is so much room to run. another neighbor
has two dogs that sometimes walk out 
in the middle of a winter night.
their shadows run without them.
i have a vision of us all in the field,
walking to the patch of trees. 
what would we talk about? 
i want to know more. about what it means
for us to draw & undraw our borders.
to un-own the land & cradle it. 
we know more of each other 
& less of each other than it seems. 
sometimes their packages are delivered
at my door. i always walk them over. 
consider ringing the doorbell or knocking
on the door. i don't. why don't i?
we become the patron saints 
of the distances. my favorite nights 
are the ones when all our lights are out.
it is like we are sharing a fistful
of dark. the dogs chase each other. 
the stars chew us down to the bone. 

ice maker 

a cold mouth is a growing one.
i cannot name water without 
thinking of terror. an empire
begins with gender-horror.
the land as a woman. a woman
as a vessel & an apple tree. chopping down
the mother & dragging her to watch
mountain-scarred with faces. as a child,
i loved to eat ice. we bought a cheap
plastic tray &, as the day grew long,
& i waited for my parents to come home,
i would suck & bite until my teeth
rung like bells. i was born 
in a furious heat. july with her hair down.
i always realized what was different
in other people's houses. the ice makers 
built into the doors of fridges. 
a light on in the middle of the purple dark.
skirt slit glow on the kitchen floor. 
sleepovers where, when others were in bed,
i would go to chew ice in the kitchen. 
groaning mechanism. bowls & bowls.
all kinds of feast. no one ever caught me. 
i learned to take only what will
no be missed. the ice maker, refilling
before anyone else was awake. water coming
& going. the rain on the roof. barefoot july
eating a hole through the wall. now, i still
keep a mouthful of the cold. bite down 
harder. years of practice. they think
i am scared of creatures that eat our flesh
but i eat bone. i devour the cold. 
make oceans from the ice. the empire
did not consider that we would still be here.
they say this weekend it will
snow again. i will be here, mouth open. 
i was made to melt ice. 

mirror store

there must be an easier version
of my teeth. less jagged & crammed
in the mouth of a whisperer. a less frantic scalp.
the mirror store is empty of anyone else
but me. all the vessels gulping down
legs & light. when i text you what i usually
mean to say is, "do you still want 
to know me?" i always think of distance
in paper. the paper ceiling & the paper mirror.
we used to live in a paper apartment.
how did we not catch fire? at the mirror store
i try on so many shapes. the clerk is invisible
& he suggests i try not taking up
so much space. i expand & contract 
like a fist underwater. there are mirrors made
for fish & mirrors made for lovers & mirrors made
to make you love yourself. my favorites
& the hazy ones. the ones that make me question,
"is that really me?" is that really you? time moves
in a way so that, if we saw each other
in a crowded room, we might not notice 
each other. my aunt is dying & i haven't visited.
she doesn't know who anyone is & i know
for certain i will confuse her. a gender 
in a coin toss. i have a dream that she will
mistake me for my father. i look like him
when he was young. i am only slightly shorter
than him. i do not go & inside take 
a really cheap mirror home. i don't know
what i want to do with it. a part of me believes
it is not a vessel but a portal. there are 
all kinds of folk magic traditions where
mirrors act like this. i do not know yet
what or who i would want to come through.
the calendar lays itself out like a pill organizer.
i call my aunt & no one picks up. 
i wrap the mirror in towels, afraid of
this fresh threshold. i delete a text to you. 
somewhere, the old bathroom we used to kiss in
is burning loud & fast. 

corn singing

sometimes i see the corn in the winter.
she is walking the fields, snow up
to her throat. around here, it is all
feed corn. as a girl i stole an ear 
on a walk through the snaking country roads.
it tasted like knuckles. warbling sun kernel.
the corn sings to me & i sing back.
roots like eyelashes. i am getting older 
which is to say i have less summers.
we used to have a family friend 
who would report, "i have maybe
ten summers left." i imagine my life
measured in corn. it sounds more plentiful.
hundreds & hundreds of ears.
myself, swaddled in a husk with
all my teeth kept safe from another mouth.
at my first job, i was a harvester. 
i picked apples & i pickled corn from stalks
& i plucked berries. they always asked me,
"where are we going?" i lied to them
or maybe i didn't. i said, "home."
winter makes me want to go home.
cold feet on the hard wood floor.
there is never enough money. never enough heat.
never enough corn. the spirits beg me
to take my face off & leave it in the field.
i explain that i am an unfortunate kind 
of crop. the sewing does not end. 
at least, not anymore. i find soil 
in my bed. i find soil in the sink. 
the corn walks away without me. 
in the cold night i hear her song though.
it is like beads in a tunnel of light. 

night mass

i have a recurring nightmare that i am a priest
& it is the big moment in mass
when the bread turns into body.
everyone can tell i'm faking it. 
my words turn into birds & i choke 
on the feathers. eggs smash on the floor.
the pews are empty until they're not.
until they're all my father. until they're all
smelling of roses. i still talk about my aunts
as if they're all alive. there is only
one left on this plane but the other two
are in the pews. the third, up in the rafters
or maybe in the stained glass itself.
she has said all her life, "i'm never going
to die" & there she is. prophecies are meant
to be left unfulfilled. there's the point. 
if they all opened then what would we 
be waiting for? he's not coming back. i'm as much
of a priest as anyone. i know how to listen
to the water. i know how to scoop the baptized bugs
from the foundation. holy little beetles. holy
little fat flies. in the nightmare i do not 
finish mass. i can't. i want to. the words
to the prayers have left me for dead. that is
the thing about repetition. it can unravel.
i used to say the our father in bed
at night to ward off the ghosts. of course
it didn't work. they played with the words
like rocking horses. i run from the altar
& i hide in the church bathroom
still wearing the priest robes. the heat 
never reached there & so the whole room 
would be cold. cold butt on cold toilet seat.
cold hands. cold water from the sink. 
i don't know why i keep the robe on.
it is the pink one for that one day in advent. 
a candle rolled sideways, still lit, underneath
the stall door. they want their body.
their bread. i don't know how to deliver it. 
that is when i wake up. there is always
a communion wafer dissolving 
on my tongue. i swallow it, guilty
though of what i am not sure. 

pill organizer 

i keep my days in their terrariums.
a frog on the ceiling. my gills come
& go. the zoom call has a brother
& we are being watched in new &
increasingly horrible ways. 
would you like to share your location
with this god? would you like to 
let the overlords know how often
you hold your breath? the medications
i take sound like drag names.
i open their room & they say,
"are you still deficient?" i do not get
into an argument with them about mad liberation.
instead, i take what i should. 
when i'm feeling really down i  believe
that life is just a series of entered 
& exited rooms. my script did not
come with stage directions. in my parent's house
they removed so many doors that
the ghosts did not know where to hide. 
i could feel the places on the wall
where hinges used to be. i have a pill organizer
that is a replica of that house.
the days mix together. sunday stretches
like a bouquet of legs. my brother tells me
he's off his meds. i suggest to him,
as a joke, that he gets a terrarium.
he doesn't understand the joke. 
we are frogs. glorious frogs. poisonous frogs. 
there is a new pill i saw a commercial for
that prevents the grief from collapsing time.
i make a note to avoid that. i need my grief.
what am i without my grief? 
i used to have two pet toads. i fed them
crickets from my hands. i pretended
i was feeding them time itself.
delicious. all my pills become crickets.
they sing. i take them because i am 
trying to stay alive. sometimes though i imagine
what it might be like to get midnight 
all of a sudden. tell the bugs to scurry away.
hide where no mouth can find them.
when i am my most untethered, i see bugs.
mostly centipedes & ants. they tell jokes
i do not understand. they say, "you should
get a brother." i remind them, "i have one."
he comes over & both of us want to cry but don't. 
i take the bedroom. turn it upside down.
empty it & all the dirt into my mouth. 

killjoy 

i want to be pineapple every single day.
canned like gold teeth. i think there is
a vibrant version of us 
in the galaxy of iron & water. 
here, i am a bird with too many throats.
a red light cutting through clouds.
when we drive into philly, we always watch
the radio tower lights. a cat's cradle
carving into the sky. as a child,
my father & i would escape to the forest to name
the painted turtles. their reds, less like
alarm & more like leaves. what i wish
is to live a life with only a spoon.
digging myself out of a dirt-floor cell.
no knives or even the sharp edge of 
a tin can lid. a smoothed smile. pastel grease
on our thumbs. i am not special or 
any more real than the seagulls fighting
for laughter. i have a wound that 
echoes. searches for places to deposit itself.
lands often in your mouth & weeps. please
stay with me. suck on this glass candy. 
i want to eat berries that don't bleed 
someone else dry. i want to go barefoot 
in the summer. stroke the cold face
of the mountain. not have to try to fit
the wound into a pair of pants & a computer screen
& these fingers that have always been too short. 
we can decide to be a new species of birds. 
not the killdeer but the killjoy. 
the song we make, not a balm 
but a tearing. nectar at our feet. 
a bathtub full of sugar. 

two feet

in seventh grade, snow fell for a week straight.
a vortex of mashed halos & teeth.
my brother & i would venture out
as far as we could. me, pulling him 
on the purple plastic sled. the corn fields
became the wings of an ancient bird.
they beat into ocean. swallowed us
& never spit us out. my body was changing
in terrible ways. one storm night, alone in my bedroom,
i peeled off cold wet socks & 
green snow pants. i stared at myself
in my window reflection. my body,
like a night light, a blade through the room.
all skin. a folded bedsheet. i put on 
the only bra i had & stared at myself.
i was not excited or afraid. more like hungry. 
please let me human after all of this. 
i cannot understand now why i thought i wanted
to get older. this week i am almost thirty
& the snow is falling & my ribs are 
harp strings of a terrible what-if. 
the thickening past, the week of snow, was only one of
many precipices. my body peeling away from me.
the snow falling. a buried house. one day
my brother & i went too far. his boots filled
with snow. he does not remember this now
so i often wonder if i made it up but 
i took his feet in my hands 
to warm them. breathing on my own fingers 
& flexing. the blood, a water cycle. 
corn husks all sleeping gilless under our feet. 
i think i saw my reflection too in the snow.
it was that bright. a vision of a girl-boy without
a place to take his fear. his flesh. 
when we made it home i put the kettle on.
poured out packets of hot chocolate in the blue mugs.
laid on the couch next to my brother
while the windows & the future 
filled with two feet of snow. 
 

modern seance 

sometimes i wake up & my grandmother
has made a facebook profile. she's been dead
for almost ten years. i do not miss her
& i feel badly about that. when she's online
she messages me only in italian, a language she spoke
but never spoke to me. instead, we used to talk
in the ugly bridge language. her apartment bathroom
had soap shaped like seashells.
i would cup them in my hands & hold each
to my ears in case they whooshed like
the real seashells. i did not hear the ocean,
only a phone call coming through the walls.
a dead husband. a dead clock. the cats, standing
on their hind legs & dancing. on facebook
she posts pictures i have never seen before.
i am small & sitting on her counter eating pastrami.
she shreds the meat. cold in my hands. pepper 
in my teeth. pictures of our hands. pictures of
a beach when she was young. the ships. the boats.
streets in philly flush with snow. window cakes.
wildwood spring. in her pictures,
she tags me instead of my mother. her mind 
is a thicket. tangled & precise.
in her last months she did not know who most
of us were. i was always my mother. my mother was
always her sister. on facebook she will sometimes post
prayers. i do not remember her being so devote.
in fact, i think she does it for show. maybe hoping
to meet an angel on the glow machine. 
i refresh her page until it is gone & there is
no remnant. the pictures gone with her. 
once, i interviewed her for an elementary school project.
we were supposed to ask if our grandparents remembered
pearl harbor. the only thing i remember 
about her response was, "i was sitting on 
the end of my bed with the phone in my hand."
was there a phone or did i imagine it there?
i cannot predict when she will come but 
if i am honest, i can summon her. all i need to do
is weep & roast a tray of roots just like she always did
on fridays. then, the profile will return
even if only for a moment. i eat the roast.
sweet from baking. she sends me a meme of a 
greenland shark. neither of us understand it. 

miniature winter

i try to pull the winter 
out of my face but none of it leaves.
we get coffee in our hometown
& everything is the same. the word 
"decades" has shoulders to it. 
there is a storm coming
& i refuse to hear about it.
i grab a handful of snow outside
& let it melt in my hands. you keep
your hands in your pockets. 
as a child i used to take a plate
& fill it with snow. something bright
to eat. fork & spoon. the dead coming
& dining with me. their affinity for the cold. 
were you there too? i decide not 
to ask you. i forget the memories you were there for
& the ones that you weren't. to be
siblings is to be moons with 
interlocking orbits. sometimes 
we have the same name. 
sometimes i want to shake you 
& say, "if we don't run there will
be no where to run to." you send me
in the night, pictures of the miniatures
you paint. i have always admired
your ability to shrink the world.
i have the opposite problem. i find myself
in a world of giants. i consider what
it would take to push the season forward.
i just need a crocus. i just need
that garden in brooklyn we visited
when you were trying to show
how much you loved me. 
next time it is summer we can try
to stop the season up. tie it down.
no more cold. no more hungry 
afternoons. we are not children anymore.
when i wake up in the middle of the night
i do not wake you too. moon light,
our own faces, in the window.
i will get the firing going & you can 
come over & we can close our eyes. stand
right in front of the stove & pretend
the sun is beating down on us 
in the dead grass at the public pool.