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. 

keep out sign

i need a podcast to tell me where to carry our skulls.
crystal & wax. beyond is the beyond. here is ash. 
so, i go elsewhere-ing myself all the way to 
the house of the abandoned woman. a vigil skeleton. 
nothing but knot & rot. she shakes her head at me, "no no no." 
in the house, mice play pretend as humans. cook casseroles
& say the rosary. there was not enough warning words.
"out" is a place i have always been crawling towards. 
outside. outcast. outrun. then, "keep," is to be broken toy. 
keep me in canisters. keep me as fire wood. who is to say 
if the room is full of nails or apples? so, i enter. 
a snake in the corner plays banjo. says, "go on."  

sugar glass

we talked through tin cans for years.
your house, on the other side of broken. 
my nest, in the see-through trees. from the sky
feathers fell & melted on our tongues. sweet 
& dangerous. rocking horse rocked on & on. nothing 
could quiet my need to devour your family's crystal goblets.
i watched as your father hunted & killed rabbits
for their sugar. slitting a throat. white fur.
hunger will bring anyone to the statue forest. 
you promised to deliver me a bowl of cream &
never came. so, i ate what i could. buttons 
& door knobs. found our talking can full of shards. 

rip van winkle

who hasn't slept for twenty years 
in the wild dark woods? i mourn my waking like an animal. 
for so long sleep pressed her spider web face to mine.
fingers falling rain. ripening planets.
mars, the little apple. i used to be able 
to carve hollows in my own shadows. then, came nightmares.
blighted moon. corn husks full of eyes. 
my father telling me i need to keep moving 
from dawn to dusk. him as a bear. him as a woodpecker. 
now, here, orange suns chew my bones. there is sleep 
& then there is the world after. peeling moss from skin. 
where are we? where is the woods? how do i sleep again? 

jungle gym

in the mulch, we burry our heads
& run around without sound or sight. 
my childhood was a worm graveyard &
a torn skirt. now, every day i am going backwards
towards playground. it sings a song
about vivisection. jungle gym remembers my touch. 
spines grow wild. from dirt & from inside trees.
tasting wood in our mouths. grasp cool 
metal bars & follow them until they burst verdant. 
rainbow texture. jungle. voices like rain fall
promises we are safe here. i dread trying to find my head 
& seeing how small this escape is.

death tarot

i ride a skeleton horse into the mouth
of the ending i didn't want. isn't this always
how a love poem goes? i wanted & wanted 
until the sun lost all his legs running.
when i pull the death card i know it is time
to find the shovel. walk out into a forest
that knows my name & dig a hole deep enough. 
a dream is an organism. blood. breath. bones. 
hungers. i feed it my fingers & my eyelashes. 
i make promises i cannot keep. i am told by
a blue bird this is just a cycle. that tomorrow,
alive again, i will just need to ask again for seeds. 

palmistry

in the darkness of my pre-self 
spiders came to knit. dice in their mouths.
when we hold hands, i am looking for our burials. 
venus stands always on the crest of a hill. dead lovers.
dead children. a spattering of lute strings.
hanging clotheslines for the heart. divination
comes like a window you must run towards.
tracing where we will end & you will find someone new. 
a string i pull & find moons i didn't know
i have to spend. i give you a bracelet so that
we can spend another thirty years playing tug-of-war.
i am crooked tree branches. a two-headed snake.  

horror movie / boyhood

we entered killer nests / spoke to each other
by flashlight / as a child / pull demons
from the mouths of my friends / based on 
a true story / feeling attic / until the end /
we jump scare / jump scare / seance staircases
burial jumprope / everyone / witness / glass
hallway / trap door / impersonating teenager /
stranger's cars / headlight or skull / i tried so hard
to be caught on film / instead it was always
/ a deer head / left out a dish of blood for them /
to drink / kneeling / wreckage / i am / the one who is left /
the one who calls / for help / the one who is first to go

mountain hunting

we have walked for seven lanternfly life cycles
with no signs of mountains. laid traps
of telephones & rice. in the dark, at our campsites,
sing mountain songs. ripe our voices out
like peach pits. i was five when i saw my first one.
it was an accident. i wondered down to where
the televisions go to die & i saw a mountain drinking
from a pool of oil rainbow water. it was sick
or else it would not have come near us. i knew 
we needed to kill one for resources but instead
of telling the others i told the mountain, "run" & he did. 
i dream that makes us kin. one mountain to another.