do you want to hold him?

i'm taking care of our pet shop terrarium ghosts.
i talk to the heat lamp & start calling it "god."
wash your hands before you do. there is a train station
full of pigeons waiting for us. do you remember
the fruit in the city? how it begged to be cradled?
i used to rest my head on your shoulder while
we turned into snakes. all of a sudden it was 
just me holding a rat. in the parking lot everyone was terrified. 
race cars with race car dreams. i want to know if you miss me.
on that island, everyone was starving no matter
how much we ate. there was no such thing as bare feet.
drinking a silver diet. our bullet hole window pet shop.

blocked number(s)

he is trying to be a walnut in my head again.
i see him in diner menus & take out boxes 
& headless trees. once, i met someone who wasn't haunted.
that was how i knew i was still living in a maze.
i look at my blocked numbers & i see he has tried
to embed a message in the numbers. numerology says,
"there was a before & then there was an after."
i wish i was talking about just one boy. it could be
any of them or the one that nests instead of me. 
i think gender is really just about who swallowed who 
inside your chest. i have a snake with a belly full of men. 
sometimes i unblock his number. stay up all night to look at it.

dress pattern

in the womanhood store i was trying to sell psychology.
here is a diagram of everything you told yourself
you weren't allowed to want. fiberglass beds for staying vigilant.
in many ways, what a dress means is the only litmus test
for what a gender is. is the dress dangerous or not?
i cut my dress from fish scales & fire. it is the same pattern
my grandmother used to make a wedding. 
nightmares come prepackaged. i buy the ones that involve 
failing at having a body. my hair falls out like leaves.
in my gender, it is always autumn. i am always the dressmaker.
the pattern, incomplete. guard towers. a needle in my mouth.
other women saying, "almost." other men steering clear.

mouse symphony 

we shrank the kitchen to the size of a plum.
it was no use anymore. we weren't going to cook.
all the birds outside were talking about sitcoms 
& plucking children from the sidewalk to take as their own. 
i crouched down to peer into a hole in the wall 
to see if i could spy on the mice that morning. 
they wore t-shirts that said, "no more gods." 
they were organizing a strike. i asked them what they're striking 
& they said "that is for us to know." i sat & thought about
how i would be a fairly good mouse. 
i wished i could join their efforts. felt desperately alone.
still, most days, i want to be those bodies & not my own.

my brother's bass case

we put the body away with the bow. bow of
a boneless ship. let's take turns guarding
the portal. zippers that ask too many questions.
he would come to the mirror & call as many bodies
as he could. cradling the monster until it was
ready to sing. i have always failed at my instruments.
i am too much like a father. i come to each string 
& say, "trapeze." trip over the beast dreams around me.
instead, he comes made of walnut shells. he comes
& sleeps inside the skeleton alongside it's slanted mouth.
with bodies, there is always a smaller truth inside.
nesting doll. nesting flute. i hear them fighting all night. 

frost/bites

each finger has a cathedral empty of birds.
i climbed a pinnacle just to find it littered with
chalices. they are worshipping in the crawl space again.
i would sever my own tongue & use it as fire wood
if it would mean summer again. the flowers die 
as closed fists. a shiver moves, vole-like 
through the pipes of my apartmeny building.
we dance to tell our blood, "this is a bath house."
only it is not a bath house. it is an ice cube tray.
i pull my teeth out to look for gold. a match says,
"at least it isn't" but doesn't finish the sentence.
false apples. a laughing oven. my toes twist like stop signs.

brushing my imaginary hair

i don't think i want to conjure my hair again
but she was a good family to me when the world 
lived only on a screen. i call that year the great plug.
i saw a ghost go in & out of a power outlet each night.
is it common for curtains to catch on fire? we have gas heat.
a boiler. i wake up in the night to make sure nothing is on fire.
my hair used to tell stories. my hair used to
pick out dresses & try to eat them. for a month
in the hurried summer, i let a bird nest in my hair.
she had to find a new home. i try to soothe. hush follicles. 
restless ball point pens. endless noctural neighbors.
here we are, lush & unseeable. here i am, the ghost. 

self portrait as dead nestling

we were almost there. "almost" is a word 
for mountains though & all i have 
is the ghost of a spoon. my coin-glossy hunger.
the wind used to give me each of my feathers.
to me, trust came naturally. i trusted
the arms of the oak tree & mother with her
wedding ring flights. to see another beak is 
to watch the self rip open. sometimes i felt
like i was just another tongue. downy static.
ladeled rain. lollipop sun. i blame myself. i say, 
"i asked the wind for too much." or, maybe, i am 
the earth's thumb print. not a martyr. just a haunting. 

pendulum

tell me where the hereafters live.
i don't want a future in telephones. i want
jaws & lips. i want to bite down through soil
& hear all the trees swinging. you hold out 
your hand & i trace a trail through the thick wood.
a path without a name that deer have followed
for centuries down into the forests' stomachs. 
there, hearts grow like dandelions. shovel yellow & then 
so easily blown to eyelashes. that is where i go
to dig for the question i haven't found yet.
the one that might exist at the end of a tooth,
swaying beneath "yes" & "no." 

audience

in the theater we were cat-walkers,
not actors or ghosts. the audience had cell phone eyes
& keyboard teeth. we kissed until we were
on the megatron. i didn't know about the cameras 
but there is always a camera. sometimes a lover
is a camera & then you end up on the news 
for promising too much. often i take a walk 
& everyone can hear i'm thinking about different ways
my friends have died. i do not want to be such a downer.
i kill flowers (mostly by accident). the audience 
switches to another channel & says, "nothing good anymore."
from the catwalk i sing. the theater is a pie pan. is empty.