reading the bees

i go outside with a question about infastructure.
how long until this house is a hole in the skull
of a dead god? the bees know everything 
there is to know about empire. 
i believe i am in a dying one
& i am not sure if this is
better or worse than living in a thriving one.
where thrive here is the same as 
consume or capture. the bees take turns
singing. there is a hymnal buried somewhere
deep inside their bodies. i remember 
when i first heard their prophecies.
i was just a little girl. bare foot in the yard.
i stepped on a wasp & the bees said,
"you are going to be a foot print." i remember
thinking, "no no no." but here i am.
i sleep inside a t-rex foot print every single night.
the bees can see in all directions. 
they see through the light sof candles 
& in the sweetness of all sugar. they return
to their queen with all the stories they see.
today, the bees are saying, "calliope
calliope" & i just want to know
what that means. the hardest part
of diving is catching the sign before 
it is already unfolding. so often i will think,
"oh yes, the bees told me about this
years & years ago." the bees are melancholy 
so i cheer them up by buying them rocket pops. 
it is summer or it is not. it is the beach
only in the middle of the land.
i ask the bees what i should know
going into this spring & they say,
"wormwood" & "fire work" & "moth."
they perch in a crescent shape 
on the window. i see a half-closed eye
or else a wink or else a tepid moon.
the house is sturdy, i understand. 
windows full of pies & ant trails. 
i reply, "do not tell me anymore then.
i don't need to know anymore."

i'm flushing my heart like a dead goldfish

the cicadas were august heat wind-up toys 
i believed i only had
the distance between breaths to convince you
i was a real mourning dove & not just
a pigeon. we ate on the floor of your apartment.
creases in my knuckles got deeper and deeper.
have you ever wanted to love someone
more than you can? or else maybe love is
only ever as much as you can reach
& pull your own balloons down
from where they try to nest in the clouds.
i bought us a cottage in the wilderness.
made us clay children to animate by the fire 
if we wanted to. you drove your car
off the side of a cliff & lived. now, here i am.
i go to the pet store to buy another heart.
the worker there fishes between the already-dead ones
to find me one that looks like it has a little life.
i make all the promises to the bad of what
on the drove home. i say, "i will not love like this again."
only there i am with you & you are lighting matches.
& you are catching cicadas & filling a moon shine jar &
i am forgetting my heart on the end table.
my heart is belly up. it was dreaming 
of blue aquarium pebbles. it was hungry for a night
free of ants. without a back door. there is always
the alley way & whatever trash congregates there.
there is always the cicadas whether 
they are furious & whirling or asleep
as other people's hearts in the damp cool ground. 
tell me, i already know, am i always going to be
like this? like a forest fire on a dinner plate?
loving in fits of water. killing the little creature
& immediately getting in the car to find another?

rock candy diary

dear gravel in my soul. dear 
pinnacle we climbed with tentacles.
dear mouth full of cave fish.
i want to tell you how i have been
finding myself purple 
more than usual. how i have been
walking away from my life
carrying only a backpack 
full of radium dishes.
glowing in the creases of the earth.
i ask the light where & how 
i will survive. when i was a girl-boy child
we would go to the hardware store
to answer all our questions.
i followed my father down aisles 
of bolts & screws. smell of cut wood
& rusting knuckles. sometimes
we would take my hands to the table saw 
& make a colony of them. here are
all your pieces. dear rock candy 
how we found you near check out.
a jar of your catacombs. dear sweet
& dear blue sounds. chewing
in the back seat on our way to try
& make a house. the drywall of 
my father's heart. he primers 
on his knees. i eat rocks. not candy
this time. dear broken window.
deer green bottles & brown bottles.
dear driveway. dear wild spearmint.
dear wanting more. oh how i wanted more.
how i tried to dream of a basement where
rock candy grew on the walls. where
my hand was in one piece. 
where my father heard 
the chick-a-dees in the walls 
& kneeled to fish them out.

why i use it/its pronouns

because i am the hive 
& the ant hill. because i am
the broken cup we found on the beach.
how we marveled at the handle
still intact. edges rounded by salt water
& seagull gossip. because sometimes
at night i walk out of my body
& go out to collect the stories
of the rocks & the stones.
because once i had a police offer 
stand over me & laugh & say,
"what is it?" i hands were bleeding.
did he not see my hands were bleeding?
because a child is 
a graph of grief. or, at least, i was.
each day another fissure. learning the world 
was somehow too small for me.
i spent whole weeks with my feet
not touching the ground. 
a doctor told my parents
with his worried-man face,
"we are concerned." because i am 
concerning. because sometimes 
other children would ask me out
as a joke. i wanted so badly
for them to not be joking. because 
i know wanting to be wanted. because
i am an architect of yearning. because
often my eyes fall out of my head
& i have to chase them. because
i am human. because i am not.
because most days when my body calls to me
i do not answer. 

bottomless bathtub 

the sound of my eyes kept going. tub drain
speaking in radio talk voices. here we go again
with the desires for purity. as if the bone
could be all i use to live. the little costume i am.
a grinning sky. washing machine
sings to my underwear. i want to soak
but the tub fills with blood. on another night
it might fill with ants. i prefer the blood.
at least it is my own. counting birds
as they enter through the window 
& deliver their warnings of the day.
"you neighbor might burst into flames"
& "you might not actually be in love
anymore." i tear them up. eat them 
like popcorn. sooner or later i know i'm going
to have to go in there & let myself
become the abyss. fall through holes
in fishnet stockings & blinks of bad men.
it is so human to always dream there would
be an arrival. instead, i am told the bathtub
just leads to more bathtub. not a nexus
or a molten core. just on & on.
once i saw my mother as a handful 
of clay. she was sitting in a shallow tub.
it's always not enough water or too much.
i kneel at the lip & try to empty the basin.
handfuls & then buckets. poured 
onto the floor. seeping through 
to the living room below. unchanging.
there are surely sharks down there 
& the eye of a monster. i just want 
a skeleton to xylaphone myself all night.
you are not awake so i don't tell you any of this.

putting on the burning building

sometimes the suite 
is the place you go to die.
i watch a hallway become halfway 
to the old church's cellar. 
a priest is trying to kill a bat
in the sacristy. i am the bat.
i get ads on facebook that say,
"were you abused by the boy scouts?"
the boy scouts came into by bedroom
through the window for a badge.
i used to crawl into graves 
at the graveyard & ask a friend,
"can you make arrangements?"
in the mail. a secret admirer 
sends me a card that says, "die flower."
he didn't say flower. i shouldn't
assume the gender of all antagonists 
is "he/him." when did a pronoun
become a piece of furnature. 
the english language  kicks itself
in the shin. i buy swimming goggles
with no intention of entering a pool.
you never know though when
you might be presented with
an opportunity to swim with whales.
i wonder if the whales know
about 9/11. maybe they do & think,
"i am glad we don't have buildings"
or "what a way to write a story."
sympathy enters my blood stream
through a bend straw. i call
an old neighbor to make sure
he's still alive. he is & does not
remember a thing about me.
you can put out a burning life with someone
but if you don't keep sharing 
granola soon you will just be 
marbles to one another. the suite 
is made of brick. the ants in my house 
own their dirt more than me.
i have an impulse to destory things
& say, "look now no one can have it."
banishing spell on myself. the flames
in the closet. it's time to ignore them. 

monster

i am used to putting my mouth in a jar
& sending it down the creek.
it is always best not to scream. sadly,
that is what you always do & i have to
fill your mouth with aquarium rocks.
maybe some people are just more numb to disaster 
than others. the first time i saw a monster
i was two. the shadow came & spoke all-night horrors.
a monster is in the window 
& i ask you to pull the curtains shut.
out of sight. out of mind. always on the other side
of every threshold. grapes we share
from the big bowl on a popcorn night.
in the closet there are monsters 
& on the tv & inside my jaw.
one drags a big log & cuts a rut in the earth.
another buys a gun from a roadside stand
as if it were an ear of corn. a monster could be
in a family portrait or in the fridge.
you tell me you want to move
to somewhere safer. i do not tell you there isn't
a place without teeth. one crouches 
in the basement where i sleep & i ask him
to please stop chewing bones 
all night. i am not indifferent to monsters
but they are not all the same. some just need 
a bit of terror. others want to burn 
the neighborhood down. who am i 
to try to tell the difference. all i can do is 
unfurl my face. the one full of pins & 
terrible eyes. tell the monster,
"here is mine." my monster i mean.
the one i take care of. the one you don't show me
& the one i don't show you. the creature softens
knowing he is not alone. i put the face away
& i make the monster promise
not to tell anyone. you call from the kitchen,
"are you down there?" i do not answer. 
i pretend to be asleep. 

purgatory baby

tell me what you do while you're waiting.
i like to scroll through every disaster
that's ever happened. i like to throw
rocks at windows & hope that one day 
a glass will shatter & i will slip inside.
on the monopoly money is a picture of
my last crush. he told me he would
find a way to buy me a new jaw.
the deer come & sharpen their teeth 
on dead trees. the grim reaper kneels
& plays dice with some slugs. i tell him
i do not need the company. he laughs
& says he just likes it here. some travelers
pass by with their backpacks full of tea cups
or pots & pans. they clang down the trail.
the travelers like to stop & promise me,
"this will all be over soon." i do not know
what "over" means to them. often,
waiting is a part of me. an organ. i don't know
what i would do without my waiting.
i have never had patience. not for tangerines 
or strawberries or cicadas. i eat everything
too early. sour fruit. early birthdays.
when darkness falls i like to remember
what it was like to really be in love.
summertime. wildflowers. your porch 
& the sound of wind chimes. the present 
is always an unsturdy place. this is where
i was born. between chasms. waving down
cars & passers by to ask, "is it time yet?"
they shrug. keep going. the trees catch on fire.
i cover my ears & wait for the morning rain 
to drown out the radios. you used to 
collect the wind for me. now, you have
a hearth of your own. people don't go backwards
& i stay here. weaving baskets to fill with 
stray antlers & teeth. 

fire hazard 

i was always told to 
not talk to cats in the spring. 
they go around 
staring at houses 
until one becomes a tower of flames.
some things are not as flamable
as you might think.
take for instance a dried rose.
those hold on to their secret oceans 
& the fire does not take hold of them.
paper though. paper is a dying tongue.
gone into ash. scattered & swallowed 
by the roots of trees who remember
the first time their necks were cut
for the sake of our memories.
i am not opposed to 
most forms of destruction. 
of course i am terrified. i am always
terrified but stopping a forest fire 
is like trying to crawl backwards
to be a seed again. i know 
a bird carried me in his mouth
& tried to decide where would be best
to devour me. fire hazard is 
not a warning but a state of being.
what comes with having a body
often mistaken for a book.
have you ever plucked a strand of hair?
ever been a prophet. i shaved by head
down to the skull. i am a gourd
hollowed out & full of teeth.
i rattle on a day like this. i take my lighter
& singe the tips of my fingers.
of anything though a seed pod will
burst into fire. crackling like fireworks.
all the little blinking unfutures.
then, the light scent of abyss.
smoke like a tossed veil. 

permission slip

i ask the angels if i'm allowed
to use the bathroom. they laugh
& say, "in another 800 years."
my gender sometimes grows
too many fingers. sometimes
too many legs. i take it to
the witch doctor to see 
if he has any use for all this excess.
he locks his door & peers
through the peep hole.
he says, "i don't take your kind."
often when people ask me
what i am i lie
& say, "a condor." at least them
i could skim the cream off the sky.
of course they can tell 
i am not what i say i am
& so they either 1) start a world war
2) pretend they don't see me.
i'm always telling people.
don't invest in an invisibility cloak.
just get yourself a wrong gender.
of course, any gender
can be wrong if you leave it 
out in the sun or feed it
too many olives. my problem was
i talked a mushroom & the mushroom
asked if i'd ever considered 
selling my soul. who wouldn't
sell a thing with soo many annoying bells?
i find myself asking more 
& more. i come to a pill bug 
to see if i'm allowed to cross 
the path. the pill bug asks
for my crossdressing permit
or a permission slip from my parents.
can't he tell my parents are
too busy burying my shoes?
in the end, there's always going to be
check point where the guard
looks the other way. 
i say, "wouldn't you like to know
exactly how a mouth becomes
a butterfly?" they say,
"yes, yes please." we go 
& breed silk worms. harvest 
their poetry. sew a gown 
fit for any androgyne.