permanence

sometimes a bucket of skulls stares at me
through the walls from where it sits
in the other room. i don't want to endure
like a candle in the back of a raccoon's throat.
but the thing about bodies is there will
always be a new one. i hope my next body 
is a bowl or a spoon. so much depends upon
a mouth's worth of blood. i stop at a gas station
between here & heaven & eat in my car. 
talk to god who hides in the glove box.
at the end of the day there is just the river
& even she doesn't know what her next throat is.

dandelion salad 

i have been hungry for years.
what can fit in my mouth: mountains
of baby shoes, a ceiling fan, & handfuls of pollen.
i dip my fingers in bronze. make a cast of my reaching.
the field has enough to eat but not enough
to make an animal of me. where has your famine
taken you? i sleep walk into a lion's mouth.
turn into a heart or a rib. some days i stop
to pick the weeds, not like a gardener but like
a family member. i dig for the root. missing legs.
little girls. lop-sided apples. plates of belonging.
the table is long & dark. i am in the salad's dream. 

a highway runs through the garden of eden

i strip mall myself & then i feel 
almost better. eat apples in parking lots.
pillow talk with a dumpster. the demons sulk
collecting broken glass & hurling it
at the wrought iron garden gates. when eden
shows up along the side of the road i try
to drive with my eyes closed. i don't want
mythology. at least not anymore. i want 
only to be fed. a stoplight bears fruit.
i don't believe i was ever naked. maybe 
in a past life as a lemon. now, i just open my mouth
& wait for snakes to come. 

towers of babel

sometimes my tongue collapses in on itself
& all i can say is "i'm sorry." language for me
is the bird that breaks against window.
often i open my mouth & find a ziggurat.
the gods do not speak at all. i am trying
to cradle my own babylon. watching those other worlds
in lake water. i stand on ceilings to try to tell 
a truth. prophets burried up to their elbows.
i am not the words that read me & yet often
a single word will be all i can think for a whole year. 
i can't tell you what it is now. that would kill the magick. 
instead i will show you the tower. 

space camp

in the summer, i built a planet 
inside my mouth where i traveled to be
an astronaut. ate nothing but fruit roll-ups
& planted picnic tables to visit in my chest.
in the house everyone walked around 
with telescopes for eyes. my parents saw 
nebula but not mice or moths. 
in the neighborhood i once knew a boy who had been 
to the sun & a girl who burried venus in her yard.
i kept my celestial to myself. a ladder reached
from my yard to the moon. there, alone, i pretended 
to be sitting among fellow travelers. 

living telescope 

all the gumball planets to chew on.
i wait here as if i might pull the infinite 
into the living room. meat balls for dinner. 
my father stands at the window talking 
about world war two generals.
mars is wearing her clip-on earrings 
& jupiter is a wedding cake. tonight,
i am just a boyhood inside a girlhood. 
putting a tiara on pluto. the galaxy is trans like me 
in the sense that everything keeps eating itself. 
my father takes out his eyes to roll them as dice.
planet-x pupils. pulpit of dead stars. i listen. 

sea shell

i want to give my mom the ocean.
we eat meatloaf in heaven & all the animals
are sea animals. i found my gills in a trash can
& every day i have looked back like orpheus
into the mouth of the could-have-been.
this new life is made of glass. this new life
is full of rice noodle windows. i eat my way
through sadness & find more sadness
on the other side. shot-gun is where future lives.
begs to go home. if only i had enough money to buy 
the biggest sea shell in the world. 
she could live in it. we all could. 

ghost crabs

we crouch in the october sand to watch
as the ghost crabs operate their graveyards.
burry wedding rings & sea glass & teeth.
a shipwreck happens every seven seconds.
we close our eyes & pretend it is not happenings.
it is not a year at all. we all are still walnuts.
the ocean spits another mermaid on shore.
she has daggers for teeth & wild blackberry eyes.
the ghost crabs come to trim her hair. they say,
"you will never fall in love like this." 
i will never fall in love like this, waiting.
waiting for a whale to fall from the sky. 

light house

some of us cut off our lips & watched
as they turned into gulls & butterflies.
i became the shipwreck captain. told everyone,
"that is not an ocean. not anymore." eagerly,
they accepted. it was a dead god. culling debris,
we found scalpels. used the blades to slice clouds
for ourselves to eat & to cradle. when pillars are falling,
you will want to give everything a name.
daughter & son & lover. the masthead lay like
a bundle of arms. i carried her until her "her"
was gone & it was just wood. in the house we turn off
the light. carry it to the basement. hoard each ray. 

day w/ landscape

i searched for flies to hold. hand inside hand.
my fists like ripe apples. autumn in an ice box.
milkmen drinking syrup. the hills stopped sleeping
years ago & now all they do is cough. 
valley where the buttons go to become beetles.
there's no one to tell me i'm not just 
a stone collecting moss. dig in earth for mirrors.
every one of them empty. our souls were feed
for race horses. they ran to pieces. we try 
to get them back. stained glass lake. 
saints on the edge brushing grubs from their hair.
i manage to find a spoon. i swallow it for safety.