family crest w/o color

we gutted the squirrel 
of all his wires & found
a flag rolled up inside.
inheretance comes like this.
like you are killing a moon
& then it is spitting picture frames
at your feet & you have
to let it live.
my family comes from
talismen ferriers & traveling
sales people. for us, a doormat is 
a place of promise or at least
so we were told & so we tell others.
another crest comes in the mail.
each one is different from the last.
we look at the knots of corn
& ask "what could this mean?"
the trick is they tell you
we had horses or an apple tree.
a skull we burried & never spoke of again.
isn't that what it means to have a lineage?
a fear of what was burried 
& where the next tree will come from?
do you know there is a time in which
we will all be royal & then i guess
maybe none of us will be?
thank god. i'll be relieved of all the pressures
of false monarchy. i have a loose tooth
& when it falls out of my head
it is not a tooth but a dice.
rolls a one. go figure. on the crest
i see myself as the belly-up whale.
i'm gone. already gone but
i hope i'll be a feeding ground.
all the little creatures will come
with their forks & knives.
they will have a great feast of me. 

stain

red comes like echoes 
on the cliff above the television 
graveyard. someone is on
the other line for you.
you find yourself in a white 
house again & you think, "no
no no no no." walking & hoping
there are no more reds in you
to bleed out. once you laid
on the empty bedframe 
of a small god & you painted
the posts & the floor with 
your guts. you have a way of 
escaping yourself. plastic grocery bag
of a person. the apple fall 
from your chest like softballs.
tripping & making a birthday cake
of the stairs. all you want is
for the sky light to not attract
the sudden deaths of cardinals.
it is you though. you are a magnet
for the internal as it severs 
& shows itself. a roadkill prophet.
kneeling in the shadow of 
a crumpled elk & twisting the bone
into sculpture. the blank is where
a red goes to be born. a pair 
of scissors. valley of ashes 
on a post card in the mailbox.
yes, i am going where the surface
is a knife away. whale watching tour
in a red ocean. there is the white 
whale. there is the cruise ship.
sunglasses night. i could just
go by myself. scrambling 
little ants. i stain everything
& watch as the color deepens. 
a man stands in the corner of the room
so he can watch. 

can openers

all i can say is there's never
a mouth when you need one.
all the cans with their 
googly-eyed dreams of thanksgiving
for food pantry people like us.
did you know you can 
get whole canned chickens?
we used to slide those animals
from their final captures & sing
to the beast as it went into a crock pot.
i search the drawers for a new god.
one with enough eyes to see
how quickly the end of the world
is coming. there's a soup ladel 
& pasta tongs & enough measuring cups
to keep me sane. i shared a house
with storks in college & they were always
swallowing the can openers.
once i was so hungry i opened
a can of black beans with nothing
but a steak knife. it makes me believe
that if i had to, i could cut an escape hatch
in my life. i'm saving the carcasses  
for future hideouts. i'm holding on
to the crescent moon so that they don't
build hostile architecture to keep us
from sleeping there. so many things
are useless without a companion. 
take this poem. if no one reads this
then isn't this just a can of pilfered eyes.
will you then be my can opener?
careful not to cut yourself 
on the lid. mostly i am cynical.
i believe there is not much i can say
that would change the world. the best
i think i can do is kick the world in the shin
& say, "i just want to feed my friends the clouds."
i like to hope though that we could
one day build a castle of cans. will they be
empty or filled? i am not sure. 

open house

there is no door.
this is where the wind goes 
to put up her feet & watch 
a soup-filled television. this face
could be yours. so could this window
& this white picket dog & this
tea pot with a picture of a husband
printed on the belly. sometimes 
a baby wanders through just like
a passing balloon. you can pretend
it's here if you want it and pretend
it's gone if you don't. that's the thing
about scent. there is no escape.
this has been contagious. more 
& more open houses & more & more
people standing outside with 
lottery tickets in their mouths.
we are waiting to see if we can
nest for the night. i invent a daughter
to go & collect twigs & scraps. 
let's be love birds in the sense that
as soon as a gun shot is fired
we are flying away. they don't plant
fruit trees in cities because they want
us to buy shovels & dig in the earth.
sometmes i grow a grave site
by accident. where else though 
are the rabbits going to go? 
everything in this world is free
to look at or at least that is 
what they'll tell you. as a child
we would go to the white computer
world just to see everything we 
could not have. this is no different.
look & look & look. this could
not be yours. a bowling ball
rolls across the floor. a parrot bathes
in the sink. in the basement
there is an old bust of elvis. 

chance of rain

frogs fall from the sky so we call our fathers
& ask what we should do. the last time
this happened it was a jupiter summer.
all the planets were bobbing
in the river. we had to temporary
to fish them out. instead the phone lines
sing old frank sinatra songs. i don't know
who that is so all i'm imagining is 
la da di de la da da. the cattle prod
worked well enough to get the sun to stop
talking about politics. the sun believes 
in meeting in the middle. i tell him 
he has spent too long away from the moon.
once you light a rock on fire
it'll start to say wild things. i was told 
it was going to rain but the chance
keeps shrinking & now it's as thin
as a piece of peppermint floss. my father
finally picks up but by the time he does 
it's stopped raining frogs & so he says,
"what frogs?" real rain comes. rain with bolts
& bicycle tires & obelisks. the internet
has been slow all week. if it doesn't speed up
soon i will be left with my own thoughts 
& their manic buzzing. how did people
use to work for hours just to make
cookies? how delicious they must have tasted.
i take the phone cord & i tie it around my wrist
& it's almost like having a god.
my umbrella tears quickly. bullet holes 
& pocket knives. in this kind of storm
the best we can be are bugs. the line goes dead.
my father is molting, i just know he is.
i remember when water held out faces 
like little mirrors. i would try & do 
my makeup in the rain. those times are gone though
or so i'm told. the sun smolders like
an incense cone. smells like onion grass & 
dandelion teeth. 

wax

i wanted to make you flux
when we met at the ankles 
of the old mountains.
your face covered in bees
and mine a cloak
of dead birds. we watched
television together
until our eyes slipped out
like oyster hearts.
slippery in the evening.
the bees worked & worked
to bring us the comb. 
to deliver churches worth
of cassette tapes. there was
not enough CD space 
to go around. i burned you
a disk of chants. i chose
the outline of a man
because that is how 
i felt this morning. like
my shoulders were meant
for downfalls. you laid down
& i crawled on top of you.
poured the wax. hot
& vibrant. oh plastic trophy.
oh false door. let's talk
about pleasure. let's talk
in stoplights. go & go 
& go. when the more is
a place we could not run to.
make a fist of my chest.
pound me into dust.
between your fingers 
a single blade of grass. a flock
of geese go to return 
a dvd. we are done & panting
& have destroyed 
the whole house. the bees return
to the aftermath. they say,
"this is not a pool hall."
we say, "no, no it's not."

inspection

we scoured the moon for pumpkins.
you with a shovel in your hand 
& me with a towel over my head.
in the dark of the attic all the ghosts
were wearing leather shoes. they asked
for shinings so we got down & kneeled.
genuflected. it has been a long time
since i was inside of a whale. still, i know
i am a canopic jar. i am where 
the spoonful goes. you were always asking
where we could hide the body
to your iphone who would dutifully 
list the nearby swamps & ditches.
one day the question will mean 
something else. i carry a dead deer 
into a masoleum. the deer has eyes 
made of gum drops. we are all prone
to looking too closely & not close enough.
sometimes i stare at my name so long
i see my old one. then, i see yours.
the alphabet is a trick. a series of portals.
you tell me i have too many eels in my blood.
i know this is true. i think you have
a fox you feed pieces of your heart to.
it's never worth accusing a lover
either they will come to you or they will
steal the fig tree in the middle of the night
when it is full of fruit. once, you showed me
a diagram of my bedroom complete
with all the trap doors i never told you about.
you said, "you passed inspection."
i did not ask, "inspection for what?"
it is less about what & more about who.
there is a parking lot with our names on it.
the seagulls there are laughing about
how we never found the pumpkins
& they were right there. beneath the skin
or beneath the floorboards. growing like
languages yet to be spoken. 

the quiet game

who talks first when our throats
are mermaid purses? the sting rays
flock at our feet like tossed 
pages of music. i bite my tongue off
& watch as it wriggles off to become 
a salamander. we all want to win
so bad. i never tell you about
the tree at the playground 
or the black rat snake. the snapping turtle
in the middle of the road who we tried
to save but devoured our fingers. instead
i send those stories to become burn piles
in the pit of my stomach. i tell myself
who hasn't be destroy just a little bit?
our bodies have a way of getting in the way.
a bulldozer knocks over a monument
to the last god we were trying
to resurrect. he is not coming back.
instead, we will have empty televisions
& a moment of silence that fills 
with ants. how do you call your dead?
i pick flowers & wait for ghosts to spill
from their split necks. i am determined
to win this game or else i am determined to
become a gargolye. i am guarding nothing
but the skeleton of an old promise
no one can remember. we eat
a plate of overripe plums using
only our eyes. i can keep this up
forever. can you? i buy a puppet.
the puppet screams, "the world
will be over in ten years!" i sew 
the puppet's mouth shut. i tell him,
"we are not supposed to talk.
we are still playing."

school picture day

i come with a face made of sawdust.
hands holding the fresh shavings in place.
everyone is wearing their funeral clothes.
bobbles & as many rubber bracelets 
as they can. in a dream i am a popular boy
& bicycles fall out of my mouth.
i ask a girl with a face of knives
if there is anyway she'd like to trade.
she hesitates before turning around
& pretending she hasn't heard me.
we make a line waiting for the pinning.
one little push pin through our sternums.
there is a display case we will soon
be ornaments of. every year they tkae my picture
just to find the frame empty. the photographer
shakes his head & says i am very insubordinate.
but i cannot help what my body will
& won't allow itself to become.
then of course there was the year of fire.
my skull ablaze. the teacher said,
"why are you always so dramatic?"
i thought that too. i thought why can't
you just be want they want for long enough
just to take this picture. the saw dust starts
to blow away in a breeze. my hair 
becoming a flock of geese. honking
flying away. the teachers scold me again.
my empty face. my glowing bones.
they tell me i will have to face the wall
for all of recess for what i've done.
i feel a little relieved. i do not know 
how to become a picture
& i don't want to. 

lingerie 

in secret i keep a coral reef.
all my neighbors guarded 
their haunted houses
& they knew nothing about
what a silk dress can make
of a raven. we ate berries
from the hands of our angels.
here "we" is a way of saying
i have had so many hands.
whirling. the gyroscopes 
beneath my skin. closing the blinds
like shutting the eyes 
of an old god right after he has passed.
every living room is a crime scene.
here is where i have gone to be dangerous.
drink blood from wine flutes.
throw darts into my own mouth.
i took a video of myself
to turn into a shrine. the cave
foamed at the mouth. wrapped each bat
in holiday paper. i am gifting 
myself to the purples only found
in the dead of night. no one else was there
to see me. only the mirrors 
licking their memories clean 
to make space for whatever a body becomes
alone & briefly without a master.