necromancing 

i started with dead squirrels who would talk 
like thimbles all autumn rain. together
we ran the moon out of the sky. we ate bark
& shot arrows at crows. a fork beneath the tongue.
candlelabras floating inside our chests. 
there is always a trail to follow back.
unlike the otherside, this life rings & rings.
i tell a deer carcass "follow the flute in the hallway."
she wakes up. frantic with gunshots & wild onion. 
everyone is folded twice. here is my altar.
here is where we butcher the ghost. here is 
the dance i ask of you, my darling. rise for me. 

a dislike for honeydew

we fed the graveyard chex mix & in return
everyone went home with plastic rings.
i had a ghost for years who begged
for canteloupe. i ate it all without sharing.
saved only honeydew for him. he'd make
necklaces of the seeds. legs on the street
have been wild lately. prone to running.
a stray dog took a bite out of the sun
& burst into flames so now the days are 
an hour shorter. i don't mind the green fruit.
i could eat a whole skull with just a spoon
but i'm not a little kid anymore. 

word of the day

the word of the day is where we met 
to shed our snake skins. is the secret tongue
of spoons. is a grandmother adjusting antenae.
is where you took me when you didn't remember
i had a body. is the headlight of your face.
is the graveyard on the hill looking out at a smug moon.
is digging for stone with bare hands. is your hand
around my wrist as you say, "we are going."
into the woods where words are nothing but carrion. 
is a place to feed. is a watering wound. is how
we thought we would stay alive. is every door you told me 
was a love poem. is opening my mouth, no sound coming out.

innocence machine

i stuck my hand inside the hollow of a god tree
& it came out full of marbles. 
walking through weeds & weathered moth flocks,
i am looking for a place to bury my teeth.
if only. if only. when i was the size of 
a black bear, i used to eat with my fingers.
soon, i will come upon a great box of transmogrification.
it will chew me until i am the purple jelly bean
or else the echo of a sincere bought of laughter.
when was the last time you cut the head off 
a plague creature? the difference between my child-self
& my now-self is now i am polite to my own desctruction.

slow leak

for weeks that winter i would drive each day
to the gas station at the foot of the mountain to
refill my front tires. kneeling in cold gravel
winter made my skin red & raw. how deeply i craved
to uncover myself. at home again, becoming a mirror ghost.
shower steam. dinner alone at the white dining room table.
more calls for snow. dim light of my television.
a companion. the pandemic had lost its legs. now crawled 
through my body with a kind of loneliness 
only queer people can know. i befriended windchimes
& fed the raccoons my scraps. just to find 
my tires wilted again in the morning.

tea cup language 

everyone has been talking like toppled kingdoms.
i waved to my neighbor yesterday just to see
he had a steak knife for a face. this hunger 
is restless. a stray dog of wooden spoons 
runs endlessly all night. a bird falls into
our cracked bedroom window & i scold you for opening 
too many pathways. i am, in many ways, a sealed urn. 
my ashes are my ashes. i just want to go sit 
with the tea cups. pretend my life is behind a glass case 
where all we can talk about are the names of flowers 
& lost lovers' lips. the cups always reject me. 
they know i'm not one of them. they hear my voice waver.     

one night

you told me you didn't want to be alone
& neither did i. it was raining & the headlights
of your car made pearls of every fall.
i did not pretend to know you. you did not
pretend to know me. there is an intimacy 
only culled from strangers. i only had one chair
in my dorm room. the lamp fell over. i made
a door bell inside your mouth. come home. come home.
your phone lock screen was a sunset. was it
a picture you took? all skin is soft in this dark.
when it was over the rain had stopped. we walked together 
between street lamp islands. then, divided.  

love sick

i walk my dog on a leash into a red room.
i don't actually have a dog. we were on fire
& i touched your hand & i said, "anything
for you." laying awake until the moon was just
a potato roll. dads shuffled in the kitchen 
putting slippers in the microwave. what i wouldn't do
to go back to those first nights. hovering
from room to room. i don't have a dog. the room
was never red but for you, it was. i kissed
every window for luck. then, in the dark, wept.
remembered all the dried up lakes. your coat
standing in the driveway by itself. 

sewer

conduit of my animal. let's mammal 
until we have enough blood. make loud pipe opera. 
gator a family. o my calliope teeth. oil. soap. 
they tell you not to say the word but
the word becomes a body prophecy. once, sun-bathing
now in the banana peel realm
with all the corporation rot. here, babies are still
in their boxes. muck. mirrors. memory sprouts
her antenna. radios croon into footprints.
you talked into the drain, conjuring me.
how could you know my terrors? you did not want me.
you wanted to speak & watch each word grow legs. 

popcorn garden

in a handful, i live like bees.
trees on their iphones say, "i am almost here."
the garden had bad service & brown paper bags.
i hid myself in piles. the movies came
with their butter & police men. 
we watched over & over until the roses
had learned how to speak all our dead languages.
crunching on a mourning dove heart.
kernels for eyes. all i can hear are rustling leaves.
trash bags full of eyelashes. the garden 
stopped weeping & so i started. it went wrong.
so wrong. i convinced myself only i could see it.