vocal warmups 

is it vegan if you swallow the bird whole?
open your lips & pretend to be the mourning dove?
i ate chocolate until my mouth was a pie crust.
circles of birds & bells. i was trying to make
a playground slide of a speculum. o my silver hungers.
kissing a boy in a practice room, he started calling me,
"trumpet." a bowl of mouth pieces. you can teach yourself
to be so hollow that anything can pass through. fists 
& legs & briefcases. i was not a good singer. i did try though.
i walked around with a handful of glass eyes. 
popped them in my mouth. cavern. catacomb. he said
this was all just a warmup. "for what?" i thought. for what. 

embedded 

we must tell the pillows where we took each bone.
i put a fish net around a god & call him father
as opposed to "daddy." i was a little girl
in the playground of my daddy's mouth. this was
last week. this was last year. this was me 
hogging all the blankets & pretending to be
a moth in a cocoon. see, i said "moth" because
butterflies are (sadly) over-used. i want a goat.
i want a chicken coop without the chickens. i want
to go to sleep & not think about all the gods i've had to bury. 
i did a bad job though. he's always saying, "come here."

butterfly memorial

when i say "memorial" i mean 
"here is where the apology lays to rest."
we bring flowers & nectar to the abstraction.
they had bodies like parenthesis & silk scarves.
there was no need to take so many. torn apart. dismembered.
once a man called me "specimen" & i think i knew
how they felt. a migration lives in my bones
like a shovel. deeper & deeper. the memorial 
is closed at dusk. then, the insects return.
beat their wings. taste the air again. 
we live in a world of hallowed destructions. mostly,
i do not want to remember. the stones say, "you must."

train station

i make my home at crossroads. a bottle
of whiskey. here, it is always midnight &
i am always needing to find a new way home. tell me,
what has been following you into the cellars 
of your language? recently i discovered that
all trains must pass through my heart
to reach their destinations. i am all rush & rails.
i catelog faces, as they peer out car windows at my wild organs.
do you remember sitting, facing one another?
you moving backwards & me forwards? a bottle 
of gin. an offering is not just a gift but a pathway.
i say, "i have been waiting for you." 

portrait of us as cloud giants

your face is a parking garage & all the rain
that's going to come. what i want is a lover again
& not just a place to bury the helicopter.
lake's worth of water make a veil over 
our faces. my gender walks without me.
i have asked so many times for a leash. 
below, the world counts its fingers. tunnels 
into our necks. my knees become serving dishes.
here come doves. here come hackers & water bears.
i was told once that there is enough to go around
& never once did i believe it. i ask my body
"how much can we cover?" you spit hail at my feet. 

soil talk

turn me now, it is not yet winter 
& there are still grasshopper songs 
to be eaten with a fork. the river you gave me
is dull now & i want another one. i need love
in handfuls & pitfalls. plummets & heaps.
i do not want love in tomorrows & someday-we-wills. 
give me the garden. the tomatoes & the tubers.
thrust your fingers into everything soft.
i do not want to be alone as the rain comes
to make promises of every bean that will come
& necklace me. i burry the trumpet. you could kiss 
every single leaf. shovel. trowel. spoon.

flute farm

we run out of silver & resort 
to making instruments out of our own bones.
you tell me there once was a little box
that would sing you "goodnight" & "goodmorning."
the power outlets shed their snakes. 
i ask you if you want to dance. it is night
& the tamborines are out. you do not want to go.
a dead fox lays at the front door. this means
we did not save our data. i remove him
& bury him underneath the ringing tree. 
i promised you last year i would look for portals.
instead, i ate every button. now the year is done. 

off-site recovery program

in the yard, dad glows green. the drum 
of pulse and sing. i never wanted to be 
an american but here i am, eating with
the vibrating spoon. i call toll free to say
i think we have another one. the tree, not a tree
but a government surveillance site. each pine cone
could power a small city. if we dig deep enough
there is space enough for all our mistakes 
or so i am told. dad hums. dad is made of 
radioactive waste. it's all because he works 
inside a captured dream. hymnals fall. 
open them to find lists of recovery addresses.  

grass forgetting green

i lay in the yard & the blades ask me,
"what is our name?" i break mirrors once a week.
count birds each day until i reach one hundred.
there has been a lack of ghost inventory-taking lately.
our estimates are now way off. there are so many more.
i lie to the grass & say, "you are all named louis." 
it is a specific burden to have to name yourself.
sometimes, i wish a green mouth would have come & said,
"you are this." the grass believes in violins.
the grass wants a lover & i am not willing or ready.
i tell the grass, "you should talk to the birds."
every blade sheds a tear. i say, "i understand."  

barbed wire hammock 

all afternoon i pretend to be sleeping.
a disciple of self-punishment, 
i invent new gods who tell me, "you are just
an acorn squash." my guts are every where
& they smell like bicycles. in a room
of sunglasses, i am just shielding my eyes
& hoping the throbbing will all go away. the trees bend
with my weight. i tell them "this is only 
for a few hours." the wires are comfortable.
not severing skin at all. yes, it's is not as bad as 
it could be. oh how i want to stop thinking like this when
somewhere there is a bed made of bones just for me.