skipped reincarnation

when i come back i really really 
do not want to be a bird.
i know this contradicts popular opinion
but i do not think i can handle
seeing everything from so high up.
looking down on the bomb place
& the turtle graveyard. on the war
machine & the smoke. let me stay
down here where our lives can be
swallowed like hard candies.
a honey drop in the sugar street. 
if i am called on to be a bird
i think i will not show up. i will 
hang out where the ghosts do & instead
haunt whatever family member 
i have left. i will wait in their closet
& whisper to them that they should
build a house in the wilderness
& never ever come down. that they should
go back to where we're from
& hold the land like it once held us.
they will ask, "where are we from?"
i will explain that this will require
a knife & a boat. ears in the andes. 
fingers in by the big river. tongue by
the mediterranean sea. they will of course
not listen to me. the next life will knock
at my spirit but i will not come. i think
i have been a bird before & i cannot handle
becoming one again. leave me where
the dirt talks easy. i would prefer to return
as a pill bug. i am certain i have never
been a bug before. i would welcome
the close-up. a mouth made for 
turning death into stories. the mushrooms,
all of them with my name in their gills. 

dim the lights

i was eating in a lunchroom 
of dreams. someone said,
"dim the lights" & all of a sudden
we were ice-pop september kids.
in the u.s., a death & a sale
are the same thing. i am getting
much cheaper. i am willing 
to do a lot for twenty dollars. 
sometimes a movie comes on 
the tv without any warning. it reminds me
of being a girl in the pocket of
a really big man with round
fingernails. maybe he was smaller
than i remember. maybe he didn't
love me like he said he did. still 
it felt nice to be devoured. curled up
in a lightbulb. i prefer the softer rooms
where we don't have to be all
spot glow & monologue. i miss 
my cues. i fail to break into song.
in high school i was in the musical
which was as close as i'll come to 
being in a cult. there were girls
with voices & boys with boyness 
& i was neither. in dimly-lit hallways 
i practiced a few faces. turned
the sun inside-out & shook it for quarters.
stole my dad's car to visit a drive in
theater. there were birds behind the screen
telling their own version of events.
i preferred their show. less promise 
& more pantomime. the ghost 
in the light bulb was just me 
& my little gender. i get a hand pie.
bite done on sugar neon.
get back to a classroom without
any windows. a boy on the ceiling.
a boy, like a bat, in my hair. 

deserters 

i love my runaway face.  but i keep 
stapling my flesh to the corkboard so i can
keep an eye on it. 
you drive the car away from the big
battlefield. it is not a metaphor anymore
it is where everyone goes to take out
their disgust. sparrow & bayonette. 
we are not those people. we are hid-in-the-trees 
people. my grandfather was an army man 
& so was his brother. his brother was good at it
which means he died far away from home.
has a grave in a place he never lived 
where the sun grits her teeth. my grandfather 
on the other hand, was a deserter. he left 
for days. turned into a horse. roamed 
& grazed. no one brought him home
but one day he woke up in suburbia. 
his skin was licked clean. no more war just
the tunnels to go back to it. in the united states
a war is always behind some door 
in the house. the oil shrine or the thunder roof. 
i want to follow in a tradition of escape-artists.
people who say, "not with my body."
my grandfather was not a hero. he was 
a man with a walking stick & a love
for owls. he bought a house without
any doors & told us to sleep there. all my childhood
i lived in the room he died in. often he would
arrive as his horse self, trotting along the ceiling,
leaving fractures wherever he went.
of course i enjoy images of a fighter. i am not
a fighter though. i am a cockroach person. 
in the dust, i'll be there. the saddle on
the horse's back. the fog in the mouth 
of a holy submarine. 

fur coat

the night after the fire, your fur coat
came alive. you were gone or you 
were on another moon. i bought cat food
but the coat would not eat it. i think
you said it was your grandmother's.
were we fighting? i think we were. i think
you were thinking of throwing me
in a pill organizer. i think i was not sure
how to survive. i ate too many vitamin gummies.
i took aim at the stars. i just wanted to make sure
the coat stayed healthy while you were
on a train to some other july. the coat growled
from the empty place. i put out my hand
& closed my eyes. i remembered my own
grandmother who once had a coat
lined with mink. i remember weeping & asking
her why she'd killed those soft creatures.
she explained, "we all have to wear someone."
the only thing that worked for the coat
was fresh meat. i walked up to the weird 
grocery store on the corner that had a walk-in
meat freezer & the same man cutting flesh
all hour of the day & night. the coat liked
to chew on the bones. eventually, she warmed up.
sat in my lap while we watched horror movies
in the dark. she slept long enough for me
to hang her back up. i think we got back together.
i think you have her now & you wear her
when the night is dripping with purple. 
i have a bite mark, not from her but it
reminds me of her. i never wore her but 
i wish i did just once. i think she would
have let me. i think i would have
looked fabulous. i worried about you 
coming home & seeing me wearing her.
what would you think of me? of us? 

cherub death

i used to run a video store
in which every movie was 
a home movie. we have a tape somewhere
of me as a flytrap in the middle of
the winter. people would come 
& search but never rent anything.
well, that's a lie a few times people
did take one. they watched it quick 
& always returned it in the little box
outside the shop. i think they were embarrassed
to know so much about me. 
i had never seen any of the tapes
other than the flytrap one. i don't know
what they were about. maybe i was a baby
or maybe i was ancient. i used to ask
my mother if the dead people we knew
were angels. she did not like
to sugar-coat anything. she explained 
that they weren't, that only angels were angels.
i used to have a cherub print blanket
in the attic. i looked at the baby angels 
& considered this species. did angels die
& if they did, did they ask their mothers
if dead angels become humans?
i looked for cherubs in the laundry machine
& in the neighbor's trees. i had siblings,
each of them maybe once a baby cherub. 
when the store closed it filled with angels.
i did not try to tell them to leave. instead,
i held a party. told them to shred the tapes. 
they devoured the film like wet noodles.
what is memory but a glimpse into 
a strip-mall store? to the best of my knowledge,
the angels have never left & no one else
has set up shop there. i found a graveyard once
in the middle of the woods. it was 
an angel graveyard. the tombstones, 
small & weathered. smooth from the rain. 
each of them, video tapes or cherubs,
i am not sure which & i did not check. 

self-portrait as cisgender 

even i am not sure what image 
i am supposed to give you. is this 
me as the child holding girlhood like
a balloon or is this me as a
boy halloween costume? i sometimes
imagine a girl version of myself 
who never turned gender 
on its back. i probably have kids.
i probably teach them to lie
just like me. sometimes, when the moon
is full of unhusband myself & eat
mulberries from a tree up the block.
i do not think it is a bad life. just as small
as my own. bigger in some ways. 
collapsed in others. maybe i have unshaven legs.
maybe i wear bras until the wire
bores through the fabric. lines on my body
for a trapeze artist to travel. i am more afraid
of the boyhood self. the one 
with a pocketknife & a love for winter. 
his blood like museum doors. 
a record player in his room he plays
for another boy until he too is an airplane. 
does his father love him? does he 
manage to keep his gender despite it all?
he is prone to anger. he does not bother with pears.
i find his knuckles sometimes beneath mine.
that is the thing about my trans gender;
the before is always like the hanged-man.
a portrait is never a portrait but a portal.
the girl-jar me is on a swing. her husband
does not know how to cook & neither does she. 

questions for the red winter berries

who taught you to be loud in the dark?
i am struggling to know when & how loud
i should be. this summer has felt
like winter. i cannot explain it. where did
all the birds go? the sun, like a raisin
on the other side of the moon. do you 
talk to each other? plan your color?
or is it a natural impulse towards 
another life? you ring like sirens.
i watch every year as the birds come & find you in
the midst of the dry wood. i am not sure
how you manage all alone. a flock of color.
i hope to live like that. open my mouth
for the birds. blare when the days are short.
do you feel like a martyr or a prophet?
or is this sound more mundane? a dropped bucket.
the garbage truck lumbering down 
our winding road. i have lost track of 
the years i have gone without breathing.
when you are born, are you already thinking
about winter? i try to put it out of my head
even when that air arrives from all sides.
when i was younger there were so many
playgrounds. now, they feel like self portraits.
red berries in their hair. i am growing
my face out in the hopes that my beard
can grow a thorn bush. i want to keep
the teeth people away & invite all the birds
i know to take a bite. 

see you next year

there was a hole in the roof
where all the cicadas came in.
i called you to ask if i was 
really alive or if everything had ended
when your plane turned into a matchstick. 
i cannot remember the first time
i lied to make someone else comfortable.
it was probably summer. your car,
in the lake. we drove until 
our faces fell off. until the hole
in the roof was like another country. 
yesterday my dad called to tell me
about my grandfather's stamps he had found
in the crawlspace beneath the house.
each was a door & he told me,
"i have been knocking all night."
he dropped them off on my porch telling me,
"i can't wait anymore." in the garage he is
becoming a priest of his own religion.
i think i might have the same religion
without noticing it. we confess to each other
& pull the curtains shut. in the shower
i am just a pebble washing myself.
i have friends i see once a year & friends i see
once a lifetime. when we parted ways
i do not think i said goodbye. the snow globe 
broke in the living room. all the storm
coming down outside. fish in the sink. 
i crave meat sometimes. my lover says,
"listen to your body." i never have,
so why should i start now? when i see you
next year even if i don't i think we should
go barefoot. i think we should roam 
the electric fields in search of copper. 
i think i should tell you how much 
i wanted to stay inside the iris of 
a broken planet.  maybe that is an apology
or maybe it is an admission of guilt. 
are we at fault for when the ocean is 
a zoo of feeling? i suppose we are. i will 
see you next year. we'll have the hole patched up
or we will just embrace it. 
you can come star-gazing. 

teeth-whitening 

i want raccoon teeth. who would
want a fake bite? i crave my grin
crooked & rodent. once i was walking
with an ex & he said, "i have to go
& get my teeth whitened today."
i did not recognize him. i was terrified.
i had never looked closely at his teeth
but the next time he opened his mouth
all i saw were the whites of doll eyes. 
we broke up soon after. well actually 
he broke up with me. i prefer to let
the other person crack the egg. we stared
at the yolk on the floor. his teeth were
like piano keys. i want to maximize imperfection. 
let my fingernails grow too long. teeth
growing from the bathroom walls. 
teeth in the catch at the bottom of the sink.
i have to admit though i have tried it.
once, in the early pandemic, i bought 
a teeth whitening kit. i was spending
way too much time with my face. mirrors
bloomed where there never had been before.
i missed everyone who used to hold me. 
my flesh, like a stage curtain. i put on
a whitening strip & turned off the tv.
silence, lapping at my feet. teeth ringing
like tuning forks. when i took it off,
there wasn't as much change as i had hoped.
instead, a soft white across my mouth. 
i smiled at every mirror i could. threw out
the rest of the box. walk up the side of the moutain
to where the raccoons were chewing on 
what was left of an old moon. i knew then
i just wanted mouths like theirs. 
sugar on their tongues. the past, like 
a spreading sweet bruise. yellow teeth 
glowing in their skulls.  

attempts at growing wings

i have planted strawberry seeds
across my shoulder blades. i have 
talked to the pigeons. asked politely 
how exactly they came to request flight
from the universe. i have jumped off
my parents roof. laid in the yard
& looked up at the stars that appeared
just like strawberry seeds. maybe it is
because i am unsure of why i want
to fly. i have had the dreams that
everyone does. the flight dreams.
my least favorite is one where my father
tosses me in the air & i just keep
rising higher & higher until the world
is a dot of light in the distance.
i don't even need the big vulture wings.
i just need something i can use
to skip the highway. to travel like
a leaf across borders. the sky, despite
all the airplanes & despite all the smog,
is still a place where i feel like i could
be alive. i see grids where there aren't any.
i look at my back in the mirror 
& find nothing but patches of old man hair.
what am i going to do if the ceiling 
falls in & all we have is the dirt? 
once i sculpted a pair of wings
from river clay. i knew from the star
they would be too heavy but i wanted
to wear them just for a day. i put them on.
no one asked if i was an angel but 
some people did ask if i was lost.
yes, i thought, of course i am lost. who here
is not lost? i think hundreds of years ago
my ancestors thought the same.
there are stories of bird people. 
a man who beat his wings until they arrived.
i am not him. instead, i am a hungry 
worm creature. the sky fills with clouds. 
some of them, heavy enough to storm.