horse-drawn suture 

i came with my mint floss
& my hooves to the rift.
the floor broke open one night
& we all ignored it. simply moved
the sofa to the other side of the room.
fed plums to the fireplace.
listened to the sugar as it turned
into birds. i pointed & said,
"what is this?" & everyone put on
their binocular faces & looked at
the neighbors who were killing
each other again. stray cats outside
always the spectators or maybe 
the angels. i don't know if i live
inside a wound or a body. inside 
a family or a sneap pea's belly.
behind a paywall or out for 
the whole town to gawk at. 
all i know is that we need a horse 
to haul the void shut. tossing shoes 
at the open mouth of a boyfriend.
every time i've tried to say the thing
the thing grows insect legs
& i can't get back there. i need to say,
"this is all coming undone."
the word abuse has too many eyes.
sees the quarry & the blood sacrifice 
& the doing our best. i no longer want
to be doing my best. i tried with all my might.
i just wanted to seal the chasm.
instead, i saw it grow even as i tried
to thread floss & shoelaces in an attempt to
pull one side to the other again. 
the horses road through
the living room frothing at the mouth.
two of them fell inside. their voices 
like dropped pennies. all the while
every watched tv. it was wheel of fortune. 
cheering. laughing. a studio audience.
i could swear sound came too
from the hole. 

palm mirror 

we went to the beautiful store
to get our faces made into needle points.
future can fold into cream
& into a knife. sometimes 
i punch the blush into my face.
there is the blood beneath
the surface. the moon is an organ.
cut open, it spills like a thumb.
i always wanted a mirror to hold me
in my most miniature form.
here i am small enough to slip
into your back pocket. powder.
a new purse. pickle jar full of tongues.
mine molts over & over. what is
& isn't worth cutting a finger off for?
i look & i see a girl whose head 
got sacrificed for a good harvest. 
each year the crops grow back as
little compacts where there used to be
peaches. i picked & picked until 
my skin was fuzzy as the fruit.
to have a girlhood is to be schooled
in the art of checking. all genders 
have their girlhoods, only some 
are more inferno than others. sometimes
the burning is brilliant. here i am
the size of a cherry. the size of 
a rear view mirror. then, on the worst day,
here i am the size of the sun.

sun stain

give me the first teeth again
& i'll write you the hymnal 
of pterodactyl flight. i'm letting the attic
ripen a certain prophecy. all in all,
i never meant to be the scribe. i always meant
to draw pictures of everything i saw:
a father with a closet full
pilot helmets. chrome crossword puzzles.
mom in the car on the way
to another planet again. 
my brothers & i discover we can
leave our mouths open & let the sun
color our insides with crayons. 
i was taught to whittle my sadness into
a useful shape. i make mine today into
a miniature tree. the tree catches 
on fire. funny how quickly a coping mechanism
can become a little disaster. i go to where
the bird's return their feathers.
they will be born again as fish or
if they're lucky, tigers. 
i watch every day as the room turns 
inside out. my little salted snail life.
the sun sends a bushel of rats 
to eat holes in my plot. i don't tell 
any more truths. i know they will
crumble from exposure. instead, i just recite 
a litany of screen doors. let time 
walk around with an apple for a face. 

the inventors of caves

speaking into the stone
the pathways came like strands
of lost hair. on the mountain,
i tried to send my ghost
to get lost down a mine shaft.
she always came back with
bundles of twigs, saying,
"the angels gave these to me."
i do not want to be a flashlight
or even a yo-yo. i want to be
a chisel & a skull in a pot
of boiling wings. the caves fill
with hard candies. my brother 
lays on his back waiting to be
mumified. i go out to the roof again
like i used to as a child
to feed a whole roasted ham to
the angels. their teeth are
pocket knives. their eyes 
rolling in starlight. i told myself
this year would be different but
here i am again with my hands
still covered in grease. still thinking,
what if we were toads in the
wild spring earth. i know i do not
want to be your rose bush anymore.
i know this deep inside
my underground rivers. 
do you remember the cave i took
you to? how we walked further
& further & the air was cool
as a fresh march day break.
stagatites formed from your face.
i saw us in every single rock formation.
imagined you leaving with out me
& me still seeing your jaws every where.
instead, we left together. the angles
dug these absences in us 
just like they did the mountains.
there is a cave where our knees
used to live. i go there to tend
their feathers. i'm not sorry anymore
but i do want to tell you i have seen them.
i've seen who made the caves in me
& they were terrifying. they were hungry.

candy house

unwrapping the door knob
& putting it in my mouth.
my father believed in 
the kind of sweetness
that turns your teeth into 
hag stones. i remember standing
in the yard eating a bag
of gummy chicken's feet
& thinking "this is breakfast."
bubble gum cigars. he said,
"this is how to be a man"
& then said, "did i tell you 
that you could be a man?"
i shattered windows with jaw breakers
& blamed it on the phantom 
chicken coop. every poem 
is a biography & a fantasy.
i planted dice & grew a tree of 1s. 
the bed of licorice we watched
the men eat. on their hands
& knees. i said, "why can't 
i decimate something. the wants 
of a static blanket child. 
so much sugar. bath tub of sugar.
bowl by the coffee holy water 
fountain. in the chimney 
my brother & i would say
there was a chocolate solider.
one who might come & liberate us
in the middle of the night. 
he would put a finger to his lips
& say, "no one wants to have a gender
until they do." he would pull us
like blimps through the air.
cotton candy sunset. our father
asleep like a tootsie roll 
in its little wax evening gown. 

giantess 

i took a daguerreotype of my grandmother
when she was eating carrots 
in her husk. fallopian flute players
& their row boats. when i say
"discover" i mean dig up every root 
of the grass one by one. 
leave the yard as a picked scab.
my grandmother
stood taller than the house &
thin as a toothpick. she bent
holding a wooden life. teeth chiseled 
from a broken bust of persephone. 
her plants how they died. one after the other.
then, her little cat butler
with his ghost up on the ceiling.
he meowed at the cleaning man
& the sitting woman. we try to save 
as much of ourselves as we can. so, 
we cast the fishing line backwards.
there i was & there i was & there i was.
only, all i can see is the purple veined woman
with a shovel for a heart. 
a breeze blows her hair. sheets of
glaciers & violet mornings. knuckles 
like acorns. touching the fins 
of a beached whale & briefly
believing we could all lift it together.
a family is not a thing that does 
but a thing that does itself.
the whale becomes us.
what can't be mended. what stays 
on the spring time beach 
& waits to become a cathedral.
that is where i find her. amoung the dunes.
broken shells. none whole are left.
or they were whole to start. 

family crest w/o color

we gutted the squirrel 
of all his wires & found
a flag rolled up inside.
inheretance comes like this.
like you are killing a moon
& then it is spitting picture frames
at your feet & you have
to let it live.
my family comes from
talismen ferriers & traveling
sales people. for us, a doormat is 
a place of promise or at least
so we were told & so we tell others.
another crest comes in the mail.
each one is different from the last.
we look at the knots of corn
& ask "what could this mean?"
the trick is they tell you
we had horses or an apple tree.
a skull we burried & never spoke of again.
isn't that what it means to have a lineage?
a fear of what was burried 
& where the next tree will come from?
do you know there is a time in which
we will all be royal & then i guess
maybe none of us will be?
thank god. i'll be relieved of all the pressures
of false monarchy. i have a loose tooth
& when it falls out of my head
it is not a tooth but a dice.
rolls a one. go figure. on the crest
i see myself as the belly-up whale.
i'm gone. already gone but
i hope i'll be a feeding ground.
all the little creatures will come
with their forks & knives.
they will have a great feast of me. 

stain

red comes like echoes 
on the cliff above the television 
graveyard. someone is on
the other line for you.
you find yourself in a white 
house again & you think, "no
no no no no." walking & hoping
there are no more reds in you
to bleed out. once you laid
on the empty bedframe 
of a small god & you painted
the posts & the floor with 
your guts. you have a way of 
escaping yourself. plastic grocery bag
of a person. the apple fall 
from your chest like softballs.
tripping & making a birthday cake
of the stairs. all you want is
for the sky light to not attract
the sudden deaths of cardinals.
it is you though. you are a magnet
for the internal as it severs 
& shows itself. a roadkill prophet.
kneeling in the shadow of 
a crumpled elk & twisting the bone
into sculpture. the blank is where
a red goes to be born. a pair 
of scissors. valley of ashes 
on a post card in the mailbox.
yes, i am going where the surface
is a knife away. whale watching tour
in a red ocean. there is the white 
whale. there is the cruise ship.
sunglasses night. i could just
go by myself. scrambling 
little ants. i stain everything
& watch as the color deepens. 
a man stands in the corner of the room
so he can watch. 

can openers

all i can say is there's never
a mouth when you need one.
all the cans with their 
googly-eyed dreams of thanksgiving
for food pantry people like us.
did you know you can 
get whole canned chickens?
we used to slide those animals
from their final captures & sing
to the beast as it went into a crock pot.
i search the drawers for a new god.
one with enough eyes to see
how quickly the end of the world
is coming. there's a soup ladel 
& pasta tongs & enough measuring cups
to keep me sane. i shared a house
with storks in college & they were always
swallowing the can openers.
once i was so hungry i opened
a can of black beans with nothing
but a steak knife. it makes me believe
that if i had to, i could cut an escape hatch
in my life. i'm saving the carcasses  
for future hideouts. i'm holding on
to the crescent moon so that they don't
build hostile architecture to keep us
from sleeping there. so many things
are useless without a companion. 
take this poem. if no one reads this
then isn't this just a can of pilfered eyes.
will you then be my can opener?
careful not to cut yourself 
on the lid. mostly i am cynical.
i believe there is not much i can say
that would change the world. the best
i think i can do is kick the world in the shin
& say, "i just want to feed my friends the clouds."
i like to hope though that we could
one day build a castle of cans. will they be
empty or filled? i am not sure. 

open house

there is no door.
this is where the wind goes 
to put up her feet & watch 
a soup-filled television. this face
could be yours. so could this window
& this white picket dog & this
tea pot with a picture of a husband
printed on the belly. sometimes 
a baby wanders through just like
a passing balloon. you can pretend
it's here if you want it and pretend
it's gone if you don't. that's the thing
about scent. there is no escape.
this has been contagious. more 
& more open houses & more & more
people standing outside with 
lottery tickets in their mouths.
we are waiting to see if we can
nest for the night. i invent a daughter
to go & collect twigs & scraps. 
let's be love birds in the sense that
as soon as a gun shot is fired
we are flying away. they don't plant
fruit trees in cities because they want
us to buy shovels & dig in the earth.
sometmes i grow a grave site
by accident. where else though 
are the rabbits going to go? 
everything in this world is free
to look at or at least that is 
what they'll tell you. as a child
we would go to the white computer
world just to see everything we 
could not have. this is no different.
look & look & look. this could
not be yours. a bowling ball
rolls across the floor. a parrot bathes
in the sink. in the basement
there is an old bust of elvis.