gravestone eating

the end is cake & so is your face. 
we go for a cemetery walk, forks in hand, 
& the grass wants to argue about global warming. 
i say, "there is still hope" & the grass says,
"if only you knew what all the green knows."
it is my birthday again for the fifth time this week. 
i am exhausted with wanting to want. on my phone 
i scroll through custom funerals. you take a bite 
of a tombstone & say "it tastes like raspberries." 
i forgo the fork & dig in with my hands. sugar under nails.
swallow the surname. then, it is stone again. rubble.
you lead me away as if my hunger didn't happen. 

my brother's box of eyes

each day the internet screams him awake. 
buckets of blinking toads & bed-ridden lilies. 
once in a chat room a man told me 
i was all he ever wanted. he had hairy knuckles. 
he mailed me eyes in ring boxes. i never told anyone.
my brother says his brain has too many tabs open.
i do too. i have seen videos of people on fire
& trap doors & guillotines. he puts an eye
in his mouth like a grape. i spill apricots 
wherever i try to speak. there is no answer
to the call. the image is gone like a rock in water. 
he hands me the ruin so i can see it too. 

ceiling w/o

hand me the box cutter.
there is a delivery from demons
seething on the porch & i'd like
to let it breathe. yesterday, all the lights
turned into raccoons & ravaged our trash.
i wish i was them: eating coffee grounds & banana peels.
fill my hands with all indulgences again. online i order
a god & he comes in a shiny urn. 
we sit & wait for rapture. it never comes.
instead our bodies float like dead balloons. 
last night i believed i could dig a hole 
in the ceiling with my bare hands. i could not. 

ghost pipe mushrooms

give me the gather of wedding worms.
choral like greying sky. a flock 
of our fallen chickens. we blew smoke 
from our eyes. laid in the forest 
& watched the color lift from our faces.
do you remember being alive? i only recall
darkness. how it fed us bones. singing with 
a wilted throat. arm in arm we take
lipstick off the moon. hang our heads.
welcome ghosts of exiles & ex-kings. 
they carry their heads in their arms
like summer melons. the night wears no gown. 

forest fire

tell me i am not the only who is here to swallow flames? 
i don't want to be a fighter anymore. i want to be the moss
whose grandchildren talk about green like it is
a gone island. i look at my block & see a colony of matches. 
walking with a bucket of water. i can't do this.
i can't anymore, seeing how many burns 
a building can wear before it is condemned. 
my first boyfriend & i used to collect lighters.
flick them open & find anything to light. 
calendars & brush & bruises. each other's tongues.
i am no longer convinced grow-back is coming. smoke comes
like antelope, galloping alleys. i'm asking then, are we gone? 

agora

there are crowds gathering & selling
their faces inside me. knuckles to windows.
i find coins beneath my skin. surface them
with a pocket knife. i am rich. i am rich.
a dog is licking the ground 
where a love potion spilled.
tell me, in a corridor of breath,
who do you become? i am not the weaver
looking for more wool but i could be 
the beech tree's broken tooth. woods come
& knock on the door for butter. i give 
all we have but more keep coming. 

machine learning

i teach my hands to make shadow puppets.
the puppets gain souls & i lose my hands.
together, a camel & a rabbit go frolic 
in the grape-flavored dark. i keep asking myself
if i was ever not a machine. what is next?
what is next? my digital teeth download 
into a necklace. i have begun to think
it is impossible to teach yourself anything. i watched
as my mothers hid between the prongs of forks
& i followed & followed until i was this person. 
the repetition is what's hard to untangle. tell me,
who was i when the world was only nectarines? 

umbrella umbrella 

i am deleting this sarcophagus
in favor of a parachute. birds relearn
how to fly in deep space. i open five umbrellas 
& find them all full of holes. through the holes, 
glow worms lower themselves. they washing machine hum.
everything is dew covered & laughing. a man comes by
& puts a leash on me. truly, i've always wanted
someone to arrive & tell me "this is how to be alive." 
instead he leads me to a lake of black water & says, 
"drink until you are gone." no matter how hard i try, 
i still remain a body with ears & knuckles,
only now with snow in falling hard in my throat.

shrinking 

i used to drink tea with angels 
but then the sky turned to red jello
& then we were all busy becoming men.
our tea cups were the size of soup bowls
but got smaller each time we conviened. we're always
running out. the angels fell from the sky
like dead birds & i collected their feathers
into glass coffins. what is heavier?
a pound of bones or a pound of feathers?
obviously the pound of feathers. the tea set fits 
in the palm of my hand now. i invite centipedes 
& cicadas & don't tell them about the angels.

wallet stove magnifying glass

twenty dollars can buy you 
enough lenses to see the smallest city.
crouching down as low as possilbe,
we are looking here for my lost frying pan.
the future is full of legs. i cross mine.
you spit in the skillet & pay me like i am 
your company for the night. i'll be good. i promise.
two quarters on my tongue. the heat is brutal
& fatherly. we make our beds in the oven & 
i inspect for bugs. nothing but a little detective.
he scours for clues to why we are still so lonely. 
soon enough he bursts into flames. we play in ashes.