over over

i want to turn my skin off sometimes
& just be a layer of sediment. let the rain
thin me to an earth veil. i have a hard time
writing about being autistic because it's like
describing the color of dusk. sure orange
but blue too & purple & yellow &
a bruise the size of every disappointment.
i am not curious what it would be like
to not be autistic. actually it terrifies me.
is there less sound? less skin? does the sky 
still sometimes strike like a hammer 
in the dark? do you listen to the flies
saying their goodnight prayers? worry about
the texture of grass on a day when everyone
wants you to be happy? every answer i have
ever sought is a bird. when i was small i had
a phase with my sibling of trying to catch a bird.
our father had told us, "if you catch it,
you can keep it." we did not have plans
for how we would care for a dove or a catbird.
still we chased them. got close once or twice.
this is what being autistic feels like in a room
of people who have too many teeth & tongues.
if i could turn off my skin though maybe
i would have some rest. maybe i would close 
my eyes & turn into syrup. thick & sweet.
so often i want to stop spilling over. over roofs
over lips over knees. my words, like ants 
fleeing for safety in the wake of a hill's destruction
flowing over a threshold. i know i am too much
for a lot of windows. screw those windows.
this is my huge giant flower face. this is my
handful of hair. this is my rocket collection.
when i reach the moon i am going to put
my ear to the surface & listen. see if i can catch
the rocks breathing like i know they do. to me
it is a gift to over the over. my body, ringing.
i will never be any smaller. i take my skin off.
terrify the sky. all the birds underneath.
nothing to catch. thousands of beaks right here. 

meltdown

i don't want a face anymore.
i think it would be easier if i just
walked around with a little sign
that read "please talk to me."
i ask you what you see in the clouds 
& you respond, "what clouds?"
often i am the only one in a room
thinking about teeth. what a shame
we could all be loudly aware of our
potential for soil enrichment.
the geese have decided not to return
to wherever they came from. that is fair.
i am also a creature of dislocation. 
my knees slide out of their sockets sometimes.
i take that as a blessing. look at me & look
at how i live like pasta becoming 
a meal. i don't have good control
of my emotions. i put them in jars.
i feed them to my hypothetical children.
i put them in envelopes & send them 
to people who i wanted to be friends with.
lately i have been less interested 
in putting myself back together. 
i let the pieces develop their own lives.
there is the angry little ghost & the wild
bilingual parrot & the goat eyes &
even the pilot without a clue how
to get home. i look forward to all 
the fragments yet to come. i open
mirrors like cans of peas. see my mosaic.
i drive all night trying to reach a lover
whose name i forget. how could i 
forget their name? all i remember is that
he lives in a house without any lights.
in the cupboard with the water glassed eggs
i find a piece i did not think i had anymore.
this is the joy of being a collage creature.
there i am & there i go. 

the alphabet backwards 

i find a car in the field. all the dogs
are barking at the sun. sometimes i pass
my elementary school. they cut down
the tree i used to climb. her limbs 
now live just segments of an earth worm.
i try to climb them. always end up falling.
tonight it is going to freeze again. it is 
too late to be freezing. all the plants
explain to me, "we are not going
to remember how to sugar." once a teacher
made us recite the alphabet backwards.
the only other time i have had to do this
was when i got in a car accident. 
my head rung like a bell. the officer asked
if i had been singing. no he meant
drinking. of course i officer i was
just swallowing as much cloud as i could.
most of my life feels like that. the discomfort 
of trying to recall what comes next. 
some people walk around abc abc abc 
& i guess that works well for them. i lose 
my way. i add another vowel. the long o
that rolls down the throat like a bald tire.
i don't think i said the order right 
to the cop. he wrote in his little
death note & drove away. all the crushed parts
of the car were on the side of the road.
it is amazing how quickly mistakes can be
hidden. the car towed into the field. 
the dogs once not my dogs became 
my dogs. when my lover isn't home
i bark with the dogs. anyone who doesn't think
dogs have language has never tried
kneeling down with them. their hot breath.
their alphabet, multi-directional. no forwards
or backwards. i think i was
meant to be a tooth if not a whole 
creature. i cannot help it. i start with "z."
the tree comes apart. the creek rises. 
the worms divide, start each their own
shiny little lives. 

frozen lake geese after the snow

i sell my eyelids for marigolds.
summer is going to have fish this year.
we caught a dream animal & let it go.
the heat coming with webbed feet.
the farmer digs a hole to drain the lake. 
in winter it had frozen & i would
almost every day, wake up beneath
the surface. a television girl for the geese
who walked toward their body compass.
when it snowed the mornings were
blaring & white. i didn't need my lungs
so i used them to carry feathers toward
an oven glow. they didn't accept fire
like hair. crumbled love poem.
the lake, a taunt drum. the geese asked me
through the glass, "do you know 
we are going to have an april again?"
i treated their promises like disbatches
from a holy ship. i replied, "no i did not."
sitting in the show as a little boy,
i worried horribly about the future super nova. 
if there would still be birds once we
were all turned into light. the geese are 
confused about the drained lake just as
i am. i no longer wake up there. the sun
has to drink from puddles on the road.
the path between the fields is too overgrown
to traverse anymore. still, i see the deer.
their eyes, lakes. i ask them from a distance.
"would you let me wake up in your dark water?"
they never respond. i understand some 
intimacies are not for me. still, i crave
that quiet beneath the ice when the geese above
appeared like idols. they once told me 
a story of lovers who could only meet 
during a blizzard. i never got the ending
so i fill it with swords. so i fill it with
eyes. when it rains, the lake returns briefly.

pangea nostalgia or a hollow bone

we could have walked to meet where
the land holds the land. there is a map 
i follow when the ocean is too big. 
that greek myth about humans originally
having four arms & four legs is partially true
though it is not about soulmates. it is about
tectonic plates. it was a mistake to stand.
i find myself craving primordial. to chart 
a path across species. wake up in the twilight dawn
of a thick-shelled egg. the sun, like a father's eye
burning through the walls of any house. 
we wake with hollow bones. finally light
enough to run. i chase you until we reach
an edge. sometimes i find a corner of the world
that is still reaching. i am reaching too. 
i used to dig holes as a child. i told my mother,
"i am trying to find the core." a molten heart
to cling onto. instead, i found square nails
& once a coin with my own face on it. 
dinosaur bones missing the legs. my legs. here
we are without a map. thank god. i love to go
off intuition. stumble down a street in
the blue city where we are visitors. i used to 
believe the sky was the ocean on her black.
we still run from teeth. i ask my gps for 
driving directions into prehistory. it tells me
how to cut a pair of gills. fasten wings
from the dirt. i do as it says. i meet you where
the land is just the land. language, sleeping.
sensation filling us. the sun, cracking us open.
yolk & then the rain. 

sledding up hill

there are no brothers, only snow.
i sometimes meet our younger selves
& have to walk them home. 
it is july but they are always wearing
snow pants. my green ones & 
your blue ones. they pull their purple
sleds behind them. i ask them,
"how did you get here?" sometimes
they answer. you say, "it's a snow day."
my younger self corrects you,
"it is a snow year." the fields are just
starting to open. corn & soybeans
in their soft-neck forms. when i am
feeling really nostalgic, i pull us up
the hill behind the school. they are
no interested in going down. 
we crave to go up & up. i sometimes
think to ask you if you see them too.
then i feel embarrassed. that i am so old
& you are so old & that we used to 
bathe in the same water of the house
long turned to dirt. have you ever
sled with them? begged them to go
down the hill? i do not. i am afraid
of upsetting them. what would i do
if they didn't return? i would have
to go sit in a photograph for a year
in order to be a creature again. luckily though
i think i have been a good care giver
to us. do you agree? it is okay if you don't.
i worry that memory is less like
a video & more like a collage. i cut out
the skies i need. do you see us in june?
or maybe september when we crossed
the skunk cabbage field to see the hawk? 

shared location 

i find you in the sea 
without a vessel or soft land.
water like galaxy. whale eyes
as portals into a tether. i find you
a marble in my mouth. pins dropped
where the sky shows her ankles. 
you used to watch me come home
from all the way across the city.
my body on the train, a blue halo
in the bones of a shared machine.
i never checked yours, instead,
i counted you as a pilot. every single
plane belonged to us. 
the old wrist smell of your jeep. 
a parking ticket worn as a cape.
i always wondered what 
watching me did for you. me,
a ghost in a pacman labyrinth
rushing back home. when i could,
i had a window seat. outside, 
my location turned bloomed with
smog & children wearing bruises
like skin. at one stop i thought 
i saw you. you called me weeping.
a missed door. my location, proliferating.
thousands of spots on a broken map. 
you asked, "where are you going?"
i took too long to respond. could not
come up with a gentle way to say,
"i am everywhere i can be." 

bad apology for turning into a centipede & running wild

i'm sorry you feel 
that way. i thought you would
have loved to see the bottom
of the table like a sky 
with me. the truth is i long
craved the dampness of the world
between the shower curtains. hungered
to feel you thrum in the dark. 
you were the one who tried
to put me in a human face. danced me
like a solider in the middle of
a blazing night. i was always
this way. i did not change.
instead, i bloomed. the more legs 
& more hearts the more i learned 
you could not take me. i wept on 
the floor of the attic. tried to take
my body apart. put my skeleton 
beneath flesh again. instead, this was
what i needed to be. i stand on
the ceiling in a house that belongs
to neither of us. you are asleep
with paint swatches in your mouth. 
i don't know why you have to
live me as a betrayal. you could 
have come into the cool creases
of dusk with me. drank the orange light.
i am sorry you are a small man 
incapable of alteration. i am sorry
you believe in an imagination-less god 
who doesn't know what to do with
your body. me, i will be in 
the soil worshiping the warmth
of the ready earth. 

red light therapy

i like to believe briefly in miracle cures.
a billboard was talking about red light
& so in the danger place i googled where
& how i might take part in this ritual.
images of women laid out & bathing
in red. who wouldn't want to soak
with the sound of a warm planet?
different websites claim different benefits.
you will look younger. you will stop weeping
when the moon submerges again
in the great bowl of cold noodles. you will
remember the names of all your teachers
from grade school (even the ones who did not
ever exist). i always take it too far.
consider turning our upstairs room into
a red light room. the illumination from
beneath the door. a little portal to 
relieve the pain. my shadow, fresh 
as a rack of ribs. i stop myself before 
i buy a lamp. instead, i go outside to try
to find as much red as i can. i encounter
some horror strawberries at the market.
each of them shivers with the sights it has seen
to arrive pristine & seemingly ghostless. 
i fail to find more red. not a flower or even
a drop of blood. all my red beneath 
the surface. the animals too, spotlights 
in the tree's hair. i give up on my cures 
almost as soon as i find them. by the next night
i am fed up with red. i am painting my tongue
green. emptying the room upstairs.
sweeping the steps where i let mars sleep
while i was in my red obsession. shoo him
away with the kitchen broom. the billboard,
changed again. this time a worship 
of snails. i prepare. sit in my mailbox 
& try to call my father. he will not have
any good advice but i need someone 
to be an adult for me. to say,
"the next miracle will be the one." 

fruit fly 

i explain to the fruit flies
it is not a good time for rot. i am
tired & out of ways to clean us up. 
i want the apples to outlive the sun.
the drain is not a heaven but instead
is an escape. the flies are practicing
their religion in the living room.
our values are not all that different.
i want to survive as do they. i crave
the wilting edges of any room. i too
as a queer person, am responsible for 
tending the death rings. 
the flies line up on the ceiling & pray
into lamp light. i try to explain
that i am a good man (or whatever i am).
the flies are not interested in excuses.
i can understand this. i mostly find
that if you have to explain yourself
you are usually guilty of something.
me, i am guilty of not waking up 
early enough. not eating the squash soon enough.
not milking the moon before it goes sour. not
opening the back door so the deer
can walk in & have a place to dance 
two-legged without fear. i consider
joining the fruit flies in an attempt
at diplomacy. i decide though that would
be insincere. i want to be an honest
garbage pale if nothing else. the flies worship
the end & so do i. i think maybe
we just have different ways of reaching it.
me, through my flesh. them, through
the unraveling of others. i have learned though
that if i stick around long enough 
with another kind of spirit i can usually
become one of them. maybe in a few nights
i'll feel differently. ready to eat the sick peaches.
ready to cull the windowsill for bone.
join the flock writing their old language
on the white ceiling. rubbing my hands 
with all the others.