organ movers 

i call from the yellow pages 
of my back teeth. i say,
"i have a body. come quickly."
think of my brother standing
in his altar boy robes & myself too.
how morning in a church enters 
like a sleeping shark. blue wound.
peach bathroom soap. the priest
would ask for help taking off 
his robes. my hands grazing
his paper towel skin. 
i expect a van of men as organ movers. 
instead a hoard of vultures enter 
to take apart the machine 
pipe by pipe. the church sings
with blue jays in her teeth.
for people like me a church is a place
of lock picking to try to remember
a self. confessional. pour out 
every sin. drinking metal water
from the fountain as the priest 
turned his mouth into a geiger counter. 
they fly away with bolts & brass.
pedal by pedal the instrument.
my heart humming. my lungs,
two moths waiting to smash their skulls
against a light. when they are done
there is a hollow space in the church
where the creature used to be.
stained glass glow. i do not trust
a single one of my memories. to help them
i give them hard candies & i tell them
"do not stop talking." the vultures perch
just outside the doors. feast on 
every untangled note. the guts 
of the animal spilled in the tall grass
beside the corn field. 

ocean

i was trying to not caught up
another blue jay. they fight
over bird feeders in my stomach.
once i heard the ocean's name
in the breaking of a bone. 
typhoon. turgid river.
the monster with hooks for eyes.
i tell you about how my body 
was made into a bay. anchors. gulls.
men with too many legs. let me off
on this stop. trains going centipede
all through the night. when i see
the future it arrives like chocolate shavings.
melt in my hands. smear the room.
rotten oranges with golden seeds.
a skull found me to say, 
"put the fire down." i've burned little libraries
in my sleep. i've opened a box of cereal
to release a flock of moths. the bat
who flickers from tree to tree.
today i could drown in a thimble.
a bird bath. an ocean is really 
whatever you could die inside of.
ocean mouth. ocean spoon. ocean
father. trust me i would love
to know how to swim. on my back.
shaving my head & letting go 
of my jellyfish hair. a kraken waiting
inside a white refrigerator egg. 
his eyes, cyclones. stirring a bowl 
of dead birds. i cannot see the bottom.
studies of staircases. belly of swords.
please do not give up on me.
the payphone at the end of time rings
& i pick up to hear the ocean ask,
"can you walk home tonight?"
i shake my head. water through 
the windows. voice of thick cord 
& mother stingrays. 

telescope

from your roof
we look into the eyes 
of the giant squid.
monster is a place you go 
to cultivate a fever.
do not tell me about my pain.
i feed it humming bird nectar 
& give it a blanket fort.
telling you, “i am mostly over it
until i’m not.” everyone always has
suggestions. mine is to avoid
conversations about the afterlife.
a remote control lets me 
flip between a the telescope 
& the microscope.
everything always feels 
out of frame. paper napkin moon.
take out box of knees.
eating with a warped fork.
i dreamed a morgue of stars.
piles of dust.
you sifted in them in search 
of designer shoes but only found 
my father’s pocket watch. 
put the powder on your face.
i kiss a crash site clean.
the street lamp winks
at me & now we’re lovers.
100s of years of capsized tongues. 
now let’s rename every galaxy.
that one is a stray eyelash. that one
is a u-turn. that one is
a glitter bomb. through the lens
i see a gushing vein.
you promise me you are okay. i am not.
i walk into the night with a syringe
brandished like a telephone. 

flood warning

i tell myself i could live on
a stray eyelash & no one
would ever have to know. 
floating 
fish bowl veils.
there are flood warnings today
& i dream of living 
in my fathers mouth.
sometimes the truth will 
make a bonfire of you.
i guard a pile of watermelon rinds.
they were a gift. they rot.
sprout angel eyes: wild & knowing.
has god ever leaned down &
apologized? said “i don’t know
why i did that?”
not to anyone i know.
instead i think of him 
like my father 
in a room of simple regrets. 
a pocket knife. a stale glass
of water. when someone tells you
they made you 
ask them what that means to them.
in an imaginary phone call 
my father says, “it means 
i am god” in another he says,
“it means i am sorry.”
eating bullets on
the porch. I see a world of
flooded basements. sharks.
sting ray. gathering my attic life,
i hold a gun like the flood 
is something to be fought.
instead all i can be sure of
is that there will be water.
a shower. pulling the curtain
around me like a coffin.
learning to breathe backwards.
locking my bedroom door. locking
my bathroom door. monster clouds 
come to rub together their hands.
this is how i prepare 
which is to say there is 
no way to prepare.

rapunzel city 

if i had enough hair 
i would lower myself
into the mouth of a fresh broadcast.
call me the statistic to prove
we are still alive. once a man 
dressed as spiderman in time square
handed me a piece of paper that asked,
"would you like to die?"
it wasn't a threat or a question of concern. 
now i live in a land of towers.
each of them with hair spilling & spilling out.
a vessel is maybe meant 
to be overtaken. too much to fit.
discovering how far a strand 
of puppet string can go before
it becomes a man. i wanted 
to let every princess out. i wanted to help
them set fire to their mothers
but their mothers were princesses too
& so we have a problem of linkages.
let's not get haywire though. 
if you look at a burning girl
you can tell who lit her, right?
i count my fingers. i count my teeth.
i call another rapunzel & she is 
trying to get along better with 
her family. she thinks maybe
she can make it work & maybe 
things will get so better she will forget
what it was like to be in the tower 
at all. i nod along because
i've been here before. i know i can't
tell her anything so we just watch
the television. the television says,
"let's stop being genders already."
i say amen. when night falls 
we all go to our windows. i remember
when the sky fell in on itself.
everything was dark brown & buzzing.
we laughed in that summer dark.
the outlet no longer worked. all we had
were our mouths. the stars have been
a projection for millenea but i still
sometimes think when i see them
that maybe one or two are helicopter. 

helicopter

i want to be the green tomato
on the sea gull leg plants.
i wake up & remember you are here
& the sky is full of dragon’s blood.
when i fall in love i take 
the dinner plates with me.
blood the color of egg plant.
did you hear me talking to god
last night out of habit?
there is a helicopter pad 
on the roof & one on my tongue.
the rescue plan involves mustard 
& a fist full of nails. the tree house 
never was meant to hold 
this many cows. a crow comes &
is a helicopter. then a priest comes
& is a helicopter & it’s time to
light the candles. i’m trying
to sort out which fibers of myself
exist only to make my father proud.
murder the sponge. eat the hairy cake.
kiss me until i am just 
vanilla pudding. jelly bracelet 
for me & one for you. the helicopter
says it’s here to save you but
it’s here for photographs.
for a wild story. to make 
an acolyte of each & every eye.
do not worry. there is no 
rescue mission. i have a heart
full of quarters & baby teeth.
come on. let’s buy a car &
see how close we can get to mars. 

future treadmills

don't tell me to run.
on the television they are talking
about a new kind of fitness.
one where you don't have
to think at all. plug yourself
in to a frozen tv dinner. 
i got my legs from craisglist.
a man texting me from the old apartment
to ask, "are you up?" i am never "up"
but sometimes i do sleepwalk 
& light my hair on fire.
the oven was going all day & i simply
walked in & turned it off.
the future has a chrome kitchen
& a land line. a dial tone
in the back of my throat. i tell you
over a dying candle. "i don't know
if what i remember is true."
the future doesn't ask questions like this.
doesn't excavate the wound.
puts on a baseball cap & chews 
beef jerky in front of the beer store.
there aren't enough reasons
to repair the ferris wheel. instead 
we could have a car big enough
to own the world. i do not want
to be healed. i want to have revenge.
i want to look beautiful without effort.
a silk scarf pulled from a costume closet.
there are too many guitar players
& not enough mandolin players.
i come to the hampster wheel 
holding my rose-scented rosary.
i used to pray it every night.
each bead a broken blood vessel. 
burst beach ball. don't leave me alone.
i have an outlet to crawl into.
you still have to teach me how to breathe.

wood glue

we try to put the dining table chairs
back together again. they keep 
turning into tarantulas 
while we are out in the city
picking pawpaws. everyone is hungry
in the insatiable way that requires butter.
the dining table says, "enough forks."
we use wood glue & stand still
like a performance art piece 
or a statue, waiting for the legs
to become legs again. once, i watched 
a boy i was dating sit on a chair 
& it shattered. the world just
doesn't always want to hold us.
i keep thinking i'm next when
i sit at the table. often there is
a roasted turkey on the table
that no one else can see. i want to give you
the dream house. i want to give you
everything without wobbling.
sometimes i'll go into someone's house
& think, "oh they're a person."
my house is where a goblin tries 
to grow tomatoes. the glue seems
like it's holding. really all you can do
is hope for the best. wait for 
the fall-apart & imagine it graceful.
i want to be the dropped dish 
everyone is fussing over. shards of me
fractured across the house.
we will find slivers for years to come.

power wash

we bought a ray gun 
from a fox at the the edge 
of the forest. he had 
a space ship in his blood
& a phone booth heart.
when was the las time
you called for help?
desperate as a rung bell
i shouted at a star. it winked
& then turned into a gnat
to escape. the side of our house
that doesn't get sun
is a biome of algae & moss.
i go there to talk to
the smallest creatures. water bears
& the seeds of future snakes.
they say, "the world is on fire."
i whisper & reply,
"sometimes i feel like it is
my fault." weeks later a man comes
to power wash the side of the house.
i plug my ears but i still hear
all the creatures asking for me
to come & help. what is clean
is clean & there's nothing else
we can do about that. everything stripped 
down to the bone. i once had a whole
shiny skeleton year. everywhere 
people tried to sell me flesh.
the ray gun doesn't work but still
i practice shooting at the dead tree 
behind the house. the fox was a liar.
he promised this would 
fix everything. why isn't there ever
a trigger that will fix everything?
i go outside to admire the work
of the power washer. the house gleams.
whitened teeth. a dislocated thumb.
i pray to the same ghosts i did yesterday.
i try to remove "help" from my vocabulary.
instead, now, i say, "sacrifice"
& "artifice." there is an altar here
where only worms can go. i crawl
on my stomach to get there. the fox
is in attendance too. he asks,
"how was your gun?"

diagram of the bones in my feet

the bird hit the window like
the slap you once placed
across my jaw. i always feel like
i'm exaggerating the kinds of pain
i have felt. zoo of pickled bats.
a pine forest rises & falls in my breath.
i see a city where no one has eyes
& a chapel of cows. i go to the doctor god.
he has a good book inside a good book.
jesus did not bible himself. instead,
he lit fires. screamed into any portal
he could find. i do not believe
in christians. at least, not anymore.
where a frog prays. where my biology
units with the amphibial. don't try
& tell me you don't see wings.
angel & otherwise. the butcher
in my looking for the right place
to start the knife. haven't you 
eaten in a wind tunnel before?
held tight to a sweet potato frie?
there's enough cheese to say i'm in love.
x-rays reveal the smallest flute. a door frame.
a tiny locket with a picture of a boyfriend.
he always looked like that before
he made contact. cold creek water 
over bone. a bleeding minnow.
little clouds like field mice. i name them
just to crush them between my fingers.
dust & dust & dust. wriggle my toes.
walk on water but only when no one 
is looking. this is how i got away.