a new algorithm 

i tell the ghosts my old poetry 
& they knit backwards a self
whose eyes float
like buoys in a bowl
of fruit punch. the sun is
spitting out copies of herself
only they are slightly off.
one sun sells popcorn. another sun
scorches the earth. the truth is
i am a manufactorable 
kind of face. all it takes
is a woman tied to a chair. 
this algorithm prevents loneliness. this one
sews up the holes where 
the bones have started 
to wonder off. only, often,
i think i am less defined by what i am
& more by my absences. 
where does my head roll off
& become another red rubber ball?
here is how
my teeth left to pursue 
new lives as jupiter beetles. 
i do not want to be measurable.
taking a pocket knife 
to every number & soon
i am standing in a vat of macaroni. 
boil the moon. boil
the fear that's left. i kneel
& pick up the algorithm. it has feathers &
far too many throats. 
it says, "i want to be measurable."
i say, "i want you to celebrate."
so, i carry the algorithm
down to where the sky 
kneels to the earth. we eat sherbet 
& i lose a rib. the algorithm promises 
to learn about the smell of lavender.
to listen to techno pop.
thread a needle. i cough up 
some confetti & we are joyful. 

fear of being left out

the street lights around 
having a coven meeting with out me.
i hear them talking about 
the length of shadows they can paint.
mostly i believe everyone 
has a mouth i cannot see & they are using it
to have a joyful without me.
there are underworld words 
everyone is speaking, saying,
"let's go to the grotto
after he-she is in bed." i want to
be in all rooms at once. 
to be summoned like a demon
in a circle cut into the ground.
when i was a duckling i always heard
the other kids playing with their
digital dogs without me. my dogs 
were sick. hungry. the light
of my DS screen making a statue
out of me. no one teaches you
how & when to be alone. instead
they tell you to make cut flower lives.
here is the vase. go & fall in love.
i eat soil. drink water from the hose.
make phone calls to my father
that he does not return. he too
is having a coven meeting
by the light of the waning crescent.
tell me, how did you learn to belong here?
do you belong here? 

fire / side

coming to the mouth of the demigod
i ask if there is anyway we are going
to have a fuel prices. the earth splits open
& bats come out. listen to me,
i have never once seen a man not drive
off the edge of the cliff when given a chance.
i carve my name into every tooth
so that when they come, even if they take
everything, these will always still be mine.
to claim is to become. to become is to 
resolve to another licked envelope.
sometimes i mail petitions to god to ask
if i could try over again. if i could ride my bike
across the river of feathers. a stoplight bears fruit.
we all gather & eat quickly, knowing 
the cops will soon come back to make this illegal.
joy comes to me when i am close to 
a fissure. hair falling out. ferris wheel 
splitting into pieces of the pie. i do not believe
in taking anything back. my tongue is 
a terrarium lover. we will make 
whatever language we need to make sense
of what the big voice is going to say next.
the radio grow frog legs & tries to run away.
i pick it up. decide it is my child.
bottle feed it until the day is a bent nail . 

dwindling parties 
after edward gorey 

i knew we would come apart 
with our bones feeding a herd of gourds.
sometimes i cut myself open
just to see the seeds. lost teeth 
of old animals. the forest around
says, "we were once garden."
"father" becomes a word for morning.
"mother" for huddling close at night.
no one remembers what we are 
to one another. the monsters sing
& we feel called to them. like a piece of ourselves
wandered off & hunches in their burrows.
often i feel i am the whole grounds.
the gate & the depths & the never-getting-out.
watching another one of us be eaten,
i thought, "he is now a hologram."
then, we'll be jummping rope 
& trying to forget the clouds & the buzz
of all the insect nests that grow
on the belly of the thickest trees.
to enter a fence is to become a skeleton.
i trace borders of my life. iron. bark.
flesh. bone. feeding hair to the birds 
for their wicked nests. we came here
to relax. to shed our skin & talk to snakes.
then the air came with all its stories.
one gone then two then three. always 
the flickering promise, "we are safe now."
we are never safe. not while there are
so many mouths. tongues.
statues. masoluems. ghosts. 

ostrich egg

let's eat like chicken envy. the coop 
is pre-formatted & ready to welcome 
whatever wolves have a promise to unkeep.
i am always hungry & i wonder
if it has anything to do with
watching the moon sweel into an oval.
the yolk bleeds down our shirts.
that is why we always bring a change of clothing
to the ceremony. i am drawing circles
around everyone i can find.
safety if often a matter of minutes.
a hundred years ago if we stood here
a dinosaur might have heard us & came
to check & ensure we were christians.
i keep the beast in the closet with my old shoes.
feed him thimbles & spoons of honey.
he will give me eggs as long as i
keep imagining my heart inside a little cage.
sometimes i wonder if i was a chick
without an egg tooth & this is all
just the white if the egg. i ate 
the sun too fast. all the oranges
that spilled from my eyes & thunked
on the wet spring earth. have you ever
held an ostrich egg in your hands?
it is like holding a porcelain doll.  it is like
carrying your own skull. 
the bird weeps & i say, "just one more"
but i don't mean just one more.
we'll need enough to last a lifetime.
the ostrich hands me a jug of fireflies.
making do is a part of having a rib cage.
there will be more though. there will be more. 
i am just not sure whether or not
the more will come for us. 

dragon egg

i never intended to find the hoard.
my mother sharpens her knives
while she sits at the kitchen table.
our ceiling fills with beliefs. a bed frame
turns into an alarm clock.
i lay there & wait to be carried
by my scruff into the closet again.
i come to collect hearts. anyones but my own.
here is a bat's heart & a wolf's heart
& a deer's heart. flowers grow
where my eyes should be. our bodies
find all kinds of ways to protect themselves.
at times i have grown scales & others,
a layer of downy fur across my stomach.
i showed it to my mother 
who shaved it off & saved it in a jar.
burried the jar alongside all of the others.
the daffodils tell me to crawl along the ground.
i cut my fingers on beer bottles 
& meteors. finally then a tiny nest.
the eggs are smaller than i thought they'd be.
god instructs me to eat them.
swallow the dragon & survive. 
they glow in their pill bottles.
submarines. eject buttons. my bones
are the longest high ways. a gas station blossoms
on my sternum. let's not pretend
we believed in monsters. we knew. 

dryad saddle

we go into the woods to find
where they are hiding their tongues.
crouching in a walnut's tooth gaps.
the whistling ghosts. we put our ears
to the dirt to hear the mushrooms
sharing love poems. when people hear
that mushrooms talk they always assume
they're conspiring. i think that's because
when humans talks quietly it is often
to destroy one another. no, the mushrooms
they are giving each other new names
& sewing holes in ghost deer faces.
together they invent new religions 
to give the trees who rejoice. the trees are
always looking for something new to worship.
gods without teeth or eyes. gods 
in the water. you tell me the mushrooms 
we are conversing with are called "dryad saddles."
the mushrooms enjoy that & add the name
to their growing list. i wish i could
hear a tree fall & think, "soon that will be 
home." i do not have mycelium
to extend & use to hear your memories. 
i do not have gills or spores to spit
like little messengers. instead, i have knees
that flip like coins. heads or tails?
the mushrooms take pity on us.
together, they sing one of the oldest songs.
it sound like breeze & falling rocks.
then, i hear horses of wood. the birth of
a new tree. seed unfurling. a faint neck.
we leave & the mushrooms say,
"one day, one day" by which they mean
one day we will be part of them. 

snail shell

i climbed inside your ear canal 
to tell you a story of calcium carbonate. 
you were tolerant & flushed me out
with a saline solution.
in my dreams i run down a hallway 
until it twists & we are just missing one another.
your tail around a bend. my antenae
scraping the belly of the moon.
i wish i was an animal that grew 
my own protections. i guess i could be
if the ceiling had more eyes 
& my heart was not a colony of toads.
always so hungry. always pulling me out
in the rain to search for headlights.
i know i am not coming home & neither
are you. but if i just had that kind of shelter.
o how i would craft each spire
& twist. knitting the fibonacci spiral
into my bones. here is where i fall.
a dark pit of the self. the cave fish 
without eyes sing a song about 
the unknown. i want to live in a space
where questions coil & unfurl 
without danger. who is the monster 
around the bend? am i in love with her?
did she once take her face off in my mirror
eyes first & lips second? i often will
crawl into the knotted bellies of trees
as my makeshift shell. speaking only
to my fingernails i say, "i only."
a snail greets me & promises to trade places with me
in whatever the next life is. i know he can't 
promise that but for a moment 
before a sudden thunder storm 
i pretend that he can. 

digital crucifixation 

is there a key board command for this?
i count the jesuses 
in my parents house.
they collect dust & try
to get some sleep. i want to ethernet myself
into a story about giving
what is not yours to give.
you are one click away 
from the ultimate sacrifice.
jesus is loading. is a spinning ball
of death. is availible 
in seven to ten business days.
is experiencing some glitches.
i'm lit by a screen. the screen is
another ocean full of
beautiful sea monsters. i do not want
to talk to god. i never wanted
to talk to god. he texts me sometimes
& says, "quickly, i need your help."
i watch a live stream of 
the crucifixation. someone says,
"turn the camera off" while
another says, "keep filming."
mary magdalene covers her face
& becomes a pixel.
the motherboard is in the shape
of a cross. i tell the machine
to update & shutdown.
wait in the dark of my room
to keep watching but there is nothing 
by the time i log on again.
there is a screen saver 
or else just the picture
of the inside of a mouth. 
i cannot tell if it is moving or not.
you know what they say though,
once something is online
it's always online. i'm suggest a video,
"how to tell if you father
wants to kill you." i select,
"i'm not interested." open a private browser 
& copy the link to watch. 

for eyes

i need a quarter for my face.
my head is a gumball machine
of blue little worlds. i do not use
a shovel to search for them;
i dig with my hands.
fistfuls of dirt & soil. the smell
of a crashed car. we used to eat
wild onions when we were starving.
the onions would wink at us
& we would have to pretend
they weren't once the eyes 
of ancient boars. everything is hoofed 
at one time or another. 
i spent my eyes years ago 
on another sunrise. you were there
with your bunkbed body. 
you kissed me & turned me
into costume pearls. a string 
around your neck. i hansel & gretel 
myself back home. follow a trail
of discarded eyes i left behind.
daffodils blink & say, "you do not
want to know." i do though.
i want to know exactly how 
& where they come from. 
a basket in a grandmother's living room?
a factory full of thumbs?
i have no business wandering
so far from a source of light
but here i am in the fallow field
holding all the eyes i can find.
they are still not enough
& i do not know what else to do.
you take my hands in yours 
& tell me, "let me show you."
i do not trust you. not at all. 
last time i did you put my eyes 
in your mouth & spit them like cherry pits.
you said, "i am your eyes now."