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. 

croissant 

inside the butter curl we talked
with lamp light voices. i learned food is a place
to go forgetting. no more front door.
no more father. my alarm clock
without any legs, running in
a lightning storm. all our knees played
like dinner bells. i thought i wanted to be 
an only child. instead, we had to share
the kitchen counter when it was full
of birds. you & me on a summer afternoon.
the croissants from the grocery store.
one & then the next. chewing wildly on 
that holy day after mom went shopping 
& there were handfuls to be had. to be a sibling is
to sit on either side of a tunnel passing
a ball back & forth. i remember once 
both of us held the croissants up
to the big kitchen light. they were 
stained glass flesh. orange-brown glow.
the layers of pastry were stale-ish & flaky.
as we tore them apart the crumbs looked like
fish food on the counter. on our lips. our thighs.
we usually split the last one. wish-boned.
you with the bigger end. a dog house
in the water place. windows smudged with
fingerprints. we were never full. 

declaration 

if i were to choose a sacred text it would
at least be shiny. it would at least have
a little angel blood. a scroll or a tablet. 
not the hollow-eyed words i saw. 
we went to the capital when i was a kid.
the buildings were taller than they should be.
i remember the shadows like memories of giants. 
in the lobby of the hotel a piano played itself. 
blue water fountains. the smell of shoes in august. 
the museum felt like it was holding its breath.
clean. white. guards with ear pieces. 
i wanted to see the declaration of independence 
mostly because of the movie, national treasure. 
i hoped it might have a golden map. 
instead, the document stared back at me
from behind its glass. i asked in a whisper,
"is that it?" a piece of skin & a tissue box. 
dull & worn. not like an elder fish's gills but 
like old stockings. like polyester thrift store bras. 
i stepped back. the words turned into crows
free of the confines of an empire. i imagined 
stealing the paper like they did in the adventure movie.
not to inspect it but to unravel it. shake it down
for some seed i could not see. that i could not
ever live. we moved on.
went to the war machine museum. passed 
the big statues of small men. i hoped the words
once held on that paper found somewhere else
to be wild & ungoverned. the crows called.
i called back. 

flight risk

i know i am at risk of becoming a bird.
this is what it means to be queer 
in a land of fire. sometimes i will wake up
all feathered with an airplane at the window.
no, i do not want any more one-way tickets. no,
i cannot imagine a tunnel without you.
i have boarded aircraft just for the stewards 
to scoop me up & put me in uniform.
they said, "please, we just want to go home."
i was apparently not allowed to leave
the state. once, i was on a flight that turned
into a cloud & i had to spend years raining
before my water made it back to the cisterns
in the yard behind my parent's house.
my favorite kind of bird to be is the long distance
kind of artist. a red knot flying from
chile to new jersey. my beak full of radio.
i stand up unannounced. i go home unannounced.
there are birds in the sink. there are birds
in the mailbox that i am afraid of awakening. 
what if they are going to tell me that i am 
not ready to leave? i am always ready to leave
& i will not be sequestered. i keep a bag in
the back of my throat. goodbye a streetlights
licking my shadow. goodbye all the feathers
i shed & regrow. leave the windows open
so i can avoid the shame of the front door.
i am no prodigal son. when i come back i pretend
as if i was never gone & i expect everyone else 
to do the same. in a dream i chased goats
until we were all birds. you called me
& asked if i was in the street yet. i was not
but i lied. put my body in a little syringe. 
called a doctor & instructed, "tell me i am a bird."
terrified, he whispered, "you are a bird"
& then the government turned him into
a smoke shop. i got away. 

parking tickets

i wake up with a parking ticket
on my forehead. i am so sick of the horrors
coming when i'm not looking. i guess that is
just part of their game. i check to see
the violation & it reads, "dreaming
too close to a fire hydrant." 
i put it with the others: a little box in
the crawlspace beside raccoon skeletons 
& rat fossils. i refuse to pay which means
more will come. which means officers
will put my dna in a little "wanted" list. 
i try to think of where i might sleep
to escape them. i craft a cloud like a tree house.
clouds are not allowed in this area of town
& i do not have a permit anyway. 
everything is better without a permit.
i do not want permission from any kind
of cop for where & when i can touch the ground.
i ask the dirt, "can i park here?" the dirt says,
"please. please stay." i make a pair of wings
from my parking tickets. fly over the town. 
drop messages to strangers that say,
"i hope you break the law today." i hope they get
that tiny thrill in the plum dark. i am sometimes
afraid. once when i was a child my mother
had an arrest warrant out for her because of parking tickets.
we had to sleep with our eyes circling the block.
i don't remember how she paid them. 
their orange envelopes bright against the dashboard.
then, blazing on the kitchen table. i stole one.
just one. i filled the envelope with nails & buried it
in the yard behind the garage where the sharp
& wild weeds bloomed. 

tunnel of love

i thought there would be 
more carnival boat rides in my life. i am 
leaving messages with all the flowers
i have phone numbers for. sometimes
the television will decide to present me
a father figure. i'll be stuck praying
to it all weekend. the fridge has died 
& the frozen meat is melting. turning back
into narwhal & chicken. pressed the door
open. i have been like capital c crazy 
in the last decade so i cannot really blame
anyone for deciding to avoid me. 
i buy a ticket to see a freak show
because i am hoping to join. i nail
the audition but i pass the species test.
they say i have too much neanderthal dna
so i am technically cheating. this is not
the first time i've been caught cheating.
i shoplifted jello once. it was a bad choice
but i needed some stained glass. i was 
in college & i had fifteen dollars. there are 
big doors & little doors. big boats
& tunnels shaped like cartoon hearts.
i make a boyfriend from neon & he glows
to keep the spirits away all night.
in the tunnel everyone is a hand or
a fire. i kiss someone. i prefer not to know
who or what they are. desire is best held
in a sweet shadow. sugar or fur. 
they tasted like raisins. when we emerged
no one sat in the boat with me. 
the fair was empty. only the carny men 
shaving their heads in fun house mirrors.
i decide not to stay because i never stay. 
why would i? no job in a box? no flowers
calling me back to confess their love?
i take a bus a new cemetery. just opened.
a little food truck in the corner sells falafel. 
i stand beside it, just to smell the spices. 

funeral drive

we get lost on the way to the funeral. 
the roads turn into ice cream. a porch light
without any hair. i keep telling people
"it's okay she was really old" which is true
but not true enough. it misses her house,
broken apart still reaching. the cabinets
full of coffee bought decades ago. her sisters
like leaves in a rain river down the driveway. 
we had debated who would drive but decided
that it needed to be me. the air is full of dragons.
i am not sure which one of us is the worse driver.
it is probably me. i am prone to kissing potholes
& daydreaming into billboards. 
i have been experiencing more & more
last times. i collect them. once my boyfriend
gave me a shadow box for our not-love
to live in. i broke the window like a fire alarm.
let all the birds out to devour what they needed to.
all families have smaller families within them. 
my sibling & i are one. my brother & my father,
another. old enough 
to remember but not enough to keep.
we talk about where we are going to go after.
a cup of coffee & a heavy sun. 
when we emerge we are less lost than we realized.
the stoplights braid our hair. the others cars,
rude & not looking at our licorice grief. 
the parking lot is full when we arrive. how did we arrive?
i thought i was driving but i am not. the car, 
like beef jerky in my hands. 
sometimes it feels like we are always the last
to arrive. this is mostly on purpose. the queer kids
are the ghosts. i see our aunt, her hair like
a cloud before a heavy rain.