leftovers 

my meatloaf parts are always urgent.
tell me tomorrow will have grease
& a good sturdy kitchen table
covered with hands. i sever mine
while chopping up a holy day.
the slime of sacrifice & swarm.
standing in the glorious fridge light
& waiting for an angel to make 
a proper fortune of me. this does not come.
instead, a frog falls from the ceiling 
& demands us to eat his legs.
there is food that begs to wait
& food that begs to be devoured
on the spot. the tupperware 
are lidless & cruel. we search all night
for a red survivor. i tell you
in a pickle limbo that i am tired
of being stupid. aren't we all though?
it is important to be sad & selfish 
at least once a week. if not, what
will the poems be for? who will
the priest think about before
he microwaves his hungry man?
there is a miracle of loaves & fishes
inside my tuesday. i return to your face
& find it stacked high with plates.
then, mine too. the eldest daughter
cooks for everyone. when she does 
we come to eat her. don't get me wrong
i am not an eldest daughter. i am not
an eldest anything. i am the woven face
of a grocery store pie you ate standing up.
don't worry. i have more. 
the forks are decapitated by a thought
of permanence. i try to put their heads
back on but they are no more.
utensil graveyard. you put ketchup
on everything even my hand. 
i ask you how it tastes but 
you can't hear me over the dishwasher
gnawing on bones. 

chlorine  

a whale slept in the diving well
which i told no one else about.
in the summer the pool was
my babysitter & my companion
& my bully & my crush. 
i swallowed chlorine. 
pressed dollar store goggles
to my face & imagined a reef 
on the cement floor of the pool.
i brought the whale offerings:
a scrunchie or a single french fry.
the whale had the face of an old man.
a beard made of television static.
he told me, "do not talk to boys."
i explained to him, "i am a boy."
he said, "i know." the whale sometimes
surfaced in the form of a basketball.
teenagers played on the courts 
beside the pool. on the farthest end
there was a grill where adults went
to laugh about nothing. burgers 
& hotdogs all july. once i stepped
in ketchup & thought i was bleeding to death.
the whale said, "you will know
when you are bleeding to death.
there will be a pool of only your own blood."
i pretended to be a god sometimes.
one who could command water. 
the ocean was so small but i filled it
with sharks & razors. licking salt
from my fingers as i sat on the edge.
the whale always called. he pleaded,
"come & sing to me." even in the deep 
i could still hear the loud speakers
spilling radio across water. i sung along.
the whale said, "i would like
to make a bullet out of your voice."
i don't know if he ever did. 
it is dangerous to be as alone as i was.
you start to see everything in sapphire
& walk whales on leashes. i left at sunset.
sky an orange warning. feet pruned.
fresh freckles sprouted across my nose. 

cigarette garden

i've been burning my guts without any help.
sometimes my stomach is a super highway.
it's the one i take to my neighbor's house.
in his attic there are moths 
with the faces of girls in my grade.
i used to take the yearbook & black out
all my faces. i switched from saying,
"when i go back" to "if i go back."
don't let anyone tell you there is
a light at the end of the tunnel. there's
maybe a strawberry sandwich if we're lucky.
i try to walk on mashed potato legs.
the floor is lava. now the floor is fly traps.
why can't we all just lay in a pool of
our own playdates? i go outside the mall
& find a cigarette garden. you are smoking there
even though you don't smoke. sometimes i wish i did.
i might have more time to think about trees 
& my retina detaching. beach ball party.
a tiny little paper umbrella. don't worry
about disappearing. everyone does it
once in awhile. mine just comes 
like blue cotton candy. let's walk between
the burning jaws of our future 
& say to one another, "isn't this
a beautiful garden?" we are either playing
ping pong or billiards. the weight of the ball
is different but nothing else. 
men are digging in the sand for a still burning
collapsible organ. at the thrift shop
someone hands over a half-smoked pack
of gardenias. one tiny spider descends.
i don't bother telling him i am a death pool.
instead, i lie sweetly & tell him
i am a garden full of tinsel.  

finger trap 

i put the highway in a tupperware
to take it to my grandfather.
his eyes spin like wild tops 
& in his teeth he holds a snake.
i was baptized twice:
once in the broth pot
& once by him in the backyard kiddie pool.
the snake has a telephone
& is calling an angel to arrest us.
i take comfort in knowing
i'm descended from dishonor.
honor is overrated & always flows back
to police. instead i come from 
a costume jewelry necklace of escapes.
dominos in their natural habitat.
my grandfather died 
in what became my bedroom.
his ghost would play cards 
by himself. he doesn't need the highway
but i'm trying to say, "look i am
still alive." when you need evidence
to prove that, you might be
less alive than you think.
i get italian water ice & turn my skull
into a fingertrap: a self-capture where
mice arrive to beg for everything
you've got in your pockets. 
luckily, i don't have anything good.
i don't have heirlooms. i don't have
photo albums. i have stories 
& a cane. i have a mirror that 
when i peer into, i see a tunnel of faces.
you can back yourself into a burn pile
or you can say, "here is the highway."
his ghost eats it with a plastic fork 
then wipes his mouth on his sleeve. 

finger trap

i would drive two hours to see you
for just a spoonful of peanut butter.
eating your other half
of a stale bagel
in your studio. 
pigeons outside had more
self-preservation than me.
i am always knitting
a future of vaults.
rapunzel moon in chastity.
you gave me a key & i thought
that meant we were pouring cement.
i thought this was a house
of fingers. instead, i turned 
my eyes into snails. you stopped responding.
i drove & parked outside 
your apartment building,
worrying that you had died.
the city was always a snow globe
tucked into your cheek.
muck of winter. the warmth 
of your breath 
on the thin windows.
each again made me a collector
of pennies. heads up or tails,
i didn't care.
once, i started driving there
& my car's engine began
to spill smoke. i could have
turned back but instead
i kept driving until the engine 
swarmed with knuckles. a ringing phone.
the piles of knees i had shed.
you saying, "goodnight"
into a cereal bowl. i could reach you
& i couldn't get home.
i walked until the ground was
made of keyboards. finally 
a stork came by & said,
"you look like you believe
in god." i responded,
"you are wrong." the bird said,
"we're going to need to amputate."
he pointed to my fingers
one fused to the other
from promises i shouldn't have
kept making. they took months 
to grow back. months after
we stopped talking &
i turned into a salamander 
in a new city. still i wonder
if there is a chapel where
our thumbs go to be lovers
if they are happy. if a limb is ever gone. 
if you understood i wasn't burning
myself on the sidewalk for you. 

killing tree

there was blood for days 
after we cut down the pines.
a pair of legs stood
where their stumps used to be.
all the feral cats came
& brought offerings 
of mailboxes & lighters.
one of my father's favorite phrases is,
"it is the way it is." 
he repeated that to himself
from the rocking chair
in my old bedroom.
by this time i was dead too.
i only had a handful
of state quarters to my name.
i took sips from his glasses
of beer as vengeance. 
some people pour out 
& some people drink the world dry.
i wondered about the flesh,
the wood. the birds who used to
knit baby blankets in the branches.
the trees were not gone though
they were angry. i watched
as they shook their bomb shelters
at us. as they waved a sword.
as blood continued to gush
from the legs. my father said
in the bones of our house
there was wood rot
in the shape of the trees.
he said that was why 
we had to kill them. 
i stood in the yard with the legs.
i always wanted a witness,
someone to see what he did to me.
i told the trees i would witness them.
stand so long in the yard
that my own shadow 
would too rot a place in the skin
of the house. the legs 
were my legs. the shadows
were always my shadows.
the feral cats brought dead geese
& empty bottles. i thanked them,
slipping them thimbles of cream. 

 vending machine 

i shake the hunger box.
smell of bat blood & buttercup voices.
the machine says,
"i know you are really a girl."
i say, "i know you are
really an angel."
plastic is a way of saying
"let's not spend too much time here."
passing through town.
when i was a waitress i met
so many people who ate stop signs.
they were ravenous & then
would always send their meals back.
if you don't believe me
there's a scar underneath my tongue
from trying to talk to 
a strange man. sometimes i wake up
in the middle of the night
& find a vending machine
in the corner of my bedroom.
i announce that i am not hungry
but the machine just creeps forward.
coins pour from my mouth
& i try to shove them back in.
despite our best efforts
we're all made of money 
which is another way of saying
made of our own survival.
i try to picture a world where
we don't have to eat our fingers
until there are none left.
i give in & buy a little heart
from the portal. the heart tastes
like raspberry & chocolate. 
i want another & another
& i have enough coins to do so.
who needs self-restraint when the void 
is ripe & ready? when 
all you need to do is beg? 

beakless

you insisted, "that is a bird"
but i think i know what a dead summer looks like.
eyes like crawfish.
halos of snakes. 
we ate supper 
from silkworm knots
beneath the telephone trees.
i tried to speak for days
& nothing came out but flies.
gnats & then those thick flies
that look like punctuation
or blueberries. you were patient at first
but then it was too much.
you threw the globe at me
& then the binoculars.
i used them to look for birds.
i thought, "there has to be just one."
none of them had beaks anymore.
still, i heard them singing.
the beaks had run off 
to become new kinds of escape.
the birds were left
no longer birds
but husks 
of their former taxonomy.
i approached one slowly.
put my hand 
where the beak should be.
i nodded, as if to say, "speak."
the bird called.
it was a mourning dove. 
the call rung through me
& i saw my voice as 
a flock of dandelions
or then as a syringe
full of gold. let the not-bird go.
you later you continued,
"i know that was a bird."
i still did not respond.
i just filled my mouth with feathers
& spat them out the window
when you weren't looking.
i pretended i was leaving 
the nest. there i go. scattered. 

ghost furniture 

i plead with you until you let me
leave a chair open for visitors. 
the rocking one with the gnarled cushion. 
we were going to throw it away. 
a pile of shoes spills from the hall closet
that wasn't there last night. leather heels
& slippers. i put them in a garbage bag. 
in the morning you are weeping
standing on the stairs. you say,
"i keep remembering." i distract you
with a television the size of my palm.
birds roost beneath the bed. i tell you
about the woman with cherries for eyes.
we go to her where she lives 
inside the well door with spiders. she is not there.
you tell me you believe me even though
i can tell you're scared. it is august when
you get rid of the chair. this house is hot.
dead air conditioner still coughing
in the window. you say,
"this is our house." i tell you,
"every space is shared." you are sick
of the visitors. i build doll house chairs.
the guests return. the chairs multiply.
become actual size. isn't that how it always is? 
a fixation is the size of your thumb 
& then you have a living room too crowded with chairs 
to imagine sitting. then the shoes. 
even more than before.
they topple from drawers & down the stairs.
"i didn't want this," you say &
it is midnight & i wanted to sleep hours ago.
the radio plays & we beg for it to shut off.
sometimes a dad rock station & other times
opera vibrating the spine of the place.
"it was you," you say one morning
while we sit on the ground in the quiet.
the sun has cat eyes. the road outside 
is made of fire. "it was," i admit. 
"i was lonely." 

hypnos 

i filled my dresser with snakes
at the old apartment. i was lonely
& snakes were the only thing
that would come to mind.
i had no one to be or do 
& yet i could still never sleep.
i stayed up all night. put my mouth
to the shower drain & tried to talk to
octopi who might feel empty too.
once, in a pleading let-me-sleep fit
i sacrified a cave cricket. the cricket 
turned instantly into a telephone
& it rang like mad. i knew
if i picked it up my whole family's ghosts
would be on the other line.
you should be wary that ghosts can come
even when someone isn't dead.
i have seen my own ghosts. 
they creaked floor boards &
turned the television on. they ate
the bread i baked on the equinox. 
upstairs, my neighbors spit at each other.
the snakes, still snakes, would sometimes
stop moving & just be shoe laces.
i wept at the snakes & begged them
to not tease me. i craved their company.
their writhing. they feed off my stray eyes
that wandered in the dark as mice.
at night there are no gods. when i left
the apartment i didn't want
to open the drawers. instead, i lugged
the whole dresser to the cub. 
i kissed each handle. i said,
"goodbye snakes." the snakes said,
"you are a coward." in that moment
they were right. i could not even
take apart that life. i left it. a severed limb.
do you know how many times
i have done this? shedding everything i can.
my car, a getaway car. a ghost there
standing on the ceiling. smell of mildew.
my socks lodged still in the guts
of the dryer. you can never go back.