space heater

our old house's bones go song bird 
in winter. barefoot i would 
go to the basement 
where the mice were speaking
of stolen morsels & glue traps.
everything is barefoot again.
the space heater in the living room
i would mistake for a rocking horse.
babies grew like grapes
in the attack. i craved hidden doors.
behind the bookshelf a separate life
where even the cold had gemmed eyes.
riding every horse i could find.
my bones sometimes fell out 
& i would wash them with the wooden spoons
in the pond muck sink. do you ever feel like
you lived years of your life
inside a room only you can see?
often there is a song that spills
from the corners of my vision 
if i am not careful. the room has
a burn pile. the room has a space heater
which is not a heater at all but 
an actual horse. the horse eats 
calender pages. i pull off numbers 
& tell him, "tomorrow, tomorrow."
a arrow through the apple. paper airplane
through the window with a ranson note.
nothing like this scares me anymore.
i know i can just stay here 
& the wind outside will make itself known.
a bus will drive all the way to 
the whale graveyards. 
no one will knock on my door. 
in the spring i will not come out
but i will hear the daffodils ringing. 

hunt

we ate the tails of cows until 
only engines remained. i went out
with my red rubber ball. have you ever
searched for something so fiercely 
that the lack became a part of you?
i walk one the side of the highway 
trying to find a car to dismantle 
& take the heart home. headlights
spit their moons into dust. once,
we lived a life of spines & cellars.
now, everything has a pair of lungs.
time is a spider web without a keeper.
when we crouch & press bolts to our lips
i wonder when the machine started?
a bumper. a thigh's worth of rubber.
we used to drive across the bridge 
& into new jersey. water grinning &
promising a mirror whenever we needed it.
the car barrels past but i wrestle it
to the asphalt. dandelions with their violins
playing from the cracks. a thicket
of goldren rod turning grey. piece by piece.
a light bulb. a glove box.
the creature roamed for miles 
on nothing but america. what a pulse
to follow. gas station watering holes.
the voids in the ground where
tongues are pulled loose. the animals call
to one another as i work. i find the heart.
a golden ring into the beast.
i swallow it hole. i will lie to the others
& i will say it did not have one. 
fill a backpack with guts. follow the foxes. 

without glasses 

i used to see trees like collages of orphaned song bird wings.
waved back & said "hello, how is your darkness today?" 
i always keep mine in jam jars & in shadows drawn long as ladders. 
my hands & their separate lives. little monsters. 
we were standing in a parking lot & i said, "oh my god
the clouds have edges." throwing a telephone out the window.
once your face was a pie crust. another day, a drowned woman.
you held my hand so i would not wander off & become 
a stop sign. i have a tendancy to spin towards the practical.
i love a good rule if it leads to a rhythm. the sun spits
on my shoes. the moon's thumb prints are all over my life.
i can't believe how many eyes a dandelion has. all of them
used to just be blurred beards. now, the colony. the seekers.
when i walk out into the day like this, i know i am 
going to see roadkill. little smudges on the edges of a picture.
i live inside a flip book. thumb daggering forward. 
the frog is a slipper. the roadkill is a rusted bicycle. 

seesaw farm

tomorrow let's wake up & be echos.
i'll return if you run. decapitated mailboxes
full of coupons & a run away star.
i jump rope until you come back
but you don't come back & so i jump rope
until my arms are crowbars. broken computer screen
& we're all weeping. on the other side
used to be our favorite color. now,
the gas station between here & the seesaw farm.
eating stale twizzlers in the parking lot
& knitting a father into my own voice.
in the trunk is a backpack full of stone.
smoothed by kissing. smoothed by toads.
the work is endless & thorned. the work is
a jump drive & jumper cable. greasing the hinges 
of a hiding place. do not come back for me.
echo & echo. we can both be the visitation.
possessions in airport bathrooms.
empty beauitful ballrooms. the piano plays itself.
the car drives itself. the seesaw asks 
"who is on the other end of the phone call?"
i'm picking up a dial tone so that i can
tell you a poem. bad blood between mountains.
the fish in the dried river. i know
this is what i asked for. this is what
i said i would do. there are so many jungle gyms. 
there are so many half love poems 
& this is one of them. 

quilt

my mother made a corn field just for me
before we left. scattered blue & green husk. 
mice in the closet gossiped about you & i 
& whether or not we would last the winter. 
new york stood with crows on her shoulders. 
i never told you but sometimes 
i would watch television at midnight
with the cockroaches. i would tell them,
"my mother is making me a corn field."
we are not farmers but we are hemmed in by them.
horse hooves across asphalt. a broken down car
with a belly full of stray cats.
outside on the street the train went by
& carried with it dreams of the mountains.
i bought a needle from a street lamp 
& began to work. told myself, "i am going
to make her a cornfield." her being you
& your brickwall window. i gathered everything
i could find. coat hangers & twinkie wrappers &
even all my orphaned socks. a corn field is place
you go to feel abundant. or maybe
to believe there is still abundance. to chant "feast"
until the world is amber. kernels dry & ready.
sewing in seeds. here is where the roots 
will grab a hold of us. fix us here with the 
alley way jewels, the takeout box hermit crabs,
& the monsters. how i want to believe 
my mother made me a corn field. i wrap myself 
in a patch of the oldest sky i have.
the mice say, "it is almost over."
by "it" they mean me & you. not the winter. 

hive

i would put my ear to the wall
& hear their gossip. they talked
about becoming a heart muscle 
& where to burry the spirit 
of the old woman who once owned out house.
i considered what it would be like
to be many and one. a hive
is a being of futures. always another
body to sing with. i felt so singular 
in my sadnesses. cracks in the concrete basement.
a dead cat laying on her side 
& becoming a colony. the house had eyes
in every crease. the bees loved one another.
& yet, once a day on the windowsill 
i witnessed a bee as they turned
back into a machine. little skeletons.
my own skeleton, radiant & walking.
in the night, my bones becoming deer.
sometimes, i bought gummy chicken's feet
& gave them the bees. the bees would laugh.
they found dismemberment hilarious.
i was coming apart. found my hand 
on the bookshelf. my throat in the oven.
all the while, the bees were everywhere.
they held mass. light candles.
all behind the walls. i took a knife.
the moon was gone. so was the sun.
just me. just me in the dull bathroom glow.
pocket knife carving wall. you are there.
i know you are there. the bees 
to spite me, vanished. migrated to
the farthest reaches of the house.
they spoke in unison, "you are not
one of us." all of my honey. all of my legs.
all of my bone. 

lemon tree in my closet 

i admit i am a hoarder but only
of small portals of light which i need
to survive the day. tree first grew
when one day i caught a sun beam
with a butterfly net. i fed her pads of butter
until she was content. this was one week
when you were working all day & night 
& i wondered if your body had become
a shovel. still, in between i came to kiss you.
turned you briefly into dough.
olive oil on my hands. how badly i wanted
to be a body again. i returned to the beam.
it had taken root. cracks in the floor boards.
upstairs, the neighbors yelled at one another.
instead the closet through all i could hear
was the sound of yellow. the tree was
drinking every freckle of delight.
swelling. one single lemon. wild & bright.
i wanted to pluck it & bite down to feel
the sting but i waited until there were
dozens of lemons. the branches reached 
the ceiling. ached to emerge. i put my finger
to my lips & said, "you cannot leave here.
you are mine." i know i should not try
to own the fruit of light but i am scared.
people are always accidentally walking
into a car accident or tragic bed.
something must be sacred still. for me,
it is my lemon tree. my rapunzel.
still, i bring the tree butter. 
when she's ion the mood & we're all alone
she speaks with your oldest voice, saying,
"i am coming back." i weep to water her.
my beam of light. bite into the bitter rind.
light pouring from my eyes & then gone. 

seamonster 

when i say "everything" i mean i do not know
how to stop. i step outside & there is an ocean
i made & now i have to shovel water.
once, god came to me & put his snake beard
an inch in front of my face. i closed my eyes.
my joints have grandmothers. my grandmothers 
have only februaries. i am living off
mythologically grown strawberries. their insides
taste like tin foil. the sound of a car racing away.
car chase. nothing to gain but rubber.
i put my eyes in a mason jar & swallow the lid.
the seamonster was my fault & i'm sorry.
in the kitchen you tell me, "this is what happens
when you never say 'no'" & i know you're right
but sometimes a word feels more like an infection
or an inflatable pool than it does a real place
someone could live. i do not know where i live.
the seamonster knocks on the bathroom door
& tells me to hurry up. i am trying. i have
scheduled time to breathe. just three breaths 
& then the fiberglass planets are going to break.
i promised to pick up the pieces. i am always
promising to pick up the pieces. the monster
isn't hungry. she isn't lonely. she just wants 
to be monster. like me, all she knows 
is her own terror & then everyone around her
becomes a mirror. screaming the flesh 
from the house. only bones. furnance heart.
one long long lizard tail. tell me, when did you realize
you were breathing underwater? i stand outside
in the wild lawn. the crows come & land.
they ask if i am alright. there is an ocean in the mailbox 
& an ocean in the basement & an ocean in the garage. 
the crows are eaten by the seamonster. or else maybe
the seamonster is just the sea & the crows are eaten by sea.

rattlesnake 

my father's guitar is a basement staircase.
the meal worms sing like kurt cobain 
from inside its belly. i have a dream in which
everything rattles when i pick it up
& he is trying to sleep & i am 
always waking him up. once we caught 
a stray angel & for days left her chained
inside the garage. i would ask my father
every night, "can we keep her?"
we fed her what bugs we could find 
until on the third day she started screaming
& my father said it was time to let her go.
the world outside is a warning. signs blink
red & then orange & then yellow.
tulips with their own armories.
i loved to steal his guitar. it was 
as large as me & hissed when i picked it up.
distortion pedals enough to bike
to mars. my father collages a perfectly normal
hallway & then there you are with the sound
of falling trumpets. how do you know
when it is time to be quiet & wait
for a danger to pass or when it is
time to run into the ringing bell? he taught me 
all the different ways to swallow
a string. the snakes in the basement
he talked to when he said no one else
would listen. oh but how i listened.
lived on a diet of sand & silverfish
& his prononciations. he said, "here we are.
here we are." played his guitar
until the dark moon flashed her scales.
i was always listening.

skull

we went to basketball 
in the broken glass desert. it was recess
& everyone held a skull to play with.
wind of daggers. the vultures
playing their ancient flutes.
a carcass is never a thing that is
but always a thing that comes.
on both ends of the school day i wore masks.
here is my future cosplaying self.
the self who believes i'm going to grow up.
then, by the end, here is my self
pouring plaster for a death mask.
here are my burnt fingers & boy words
etched into my mind from when 
the coyotes came & spoke into my mouth.
every now & again a new skull
will roll down the mountain.
we chase it like it's a bowl of fruit.
dust kicked up across the land.
we dream of knowing our ages again.
some days i believe i am in the fourth grade
& others i am certain i am in high school.
on the best days i am a chrysalis
& everyone forms a circle around me
to watch & take guesses about
what i will become. i always become
a boy girl or i guess sometimes a girl boy.
inside though i dream of sunflower seeds
& teeth. my own skull rings like a bell.