rattlesnakes singing all night

lately, i try to befriend my catastrophes. 
this is not so bad. this is not so bad. 
microwave full of bees. the rattlesnakes beneath the bed 
asking for "just one ankle." i say, "i am asleep." 
our moon cracks her skull slipping on the top stair. 
every attic has a dead man's coat. tell me you still feel
some joy when, in the morning, you ask your body 
to become the person again. a goldfinch is on the news preaching
about the end times. he eats worms like each is his last.
i say he is a doomsdayer but then, at night, i stare
into my phone looking on amazon for a portable water purifier.
add to cart the backpack i will escape with as rattlesnakes sing. 

nightstand

on horse legs, the street lamps arrive.
basket ball tree. everything swells
inside a july night. i wanted so badly to be
the plum in your mouth. smudged water glasses.
phone charger cords tangled. i crave saplings:
one to grow right above our bed. your laptop blinks. 
i wish my eyes were marbles so i could roll them under the bed 
with the dust & the dog fur & then i would ask you to kneel 
& find them for me. love is often about retrieval. 
bring me back bring me back. you leave everything 
(car keys, wallet, ghosts, spare moons) between my shoulders.
i wait on hands & knees for you to reach for them, for me.

warehouse

signs all over town say "say no to warehouses."
the farms are full of the bones of dead cattle 
who, in the ringing of the melon moon, rise from the dead 
to walk towards a mountain of grain just out of sight.
there is no where to cut off your hands anymore.
wild flowers grow on the side of the highway to gossip.
no mouths to shovel coal into. a roadside stand sells
skulls. fireworks for children. the warehouse
unfolds like a stained glass window. we don't know
what it means to worship the body. maybe we never did.
all of us enter the door & become unvesseled. carry & carry 
& carry a shiny new. this is an education in wanting.

forklift driving lessons

i asked my father to show me how
he heaves one day into another.
a paring knife to sever tendons.
cow meat in the freezer. the future is
carnivorous. morning comes & dew lays like harpsichord notes. 
we stand in the driveway to practice staying alive.
he drinks from a brown bottle & a swarm of owls
perch on the roof to look down on us,
twisting their heads like bottle caps. 
the machine devours me. levers & a turned key.
he says, "now you are a man, now you can
lift anything." i start by carrying him. 

holy fork

in the night time dark, where one day eats 
off the plate of the next, we heard the forks 
singing by the corn fields. to us, hunger 
was a sibling who slept at the bottom of the closet.
we told him, "there is no food" while we chewed
sugary pink gum we bought with scoured for quarters.
went out together, as brothers do, with that secret.
flashlights severing shadows. we found the nest of forks.
all of them humming & praising the moon. i dared you 
to take one & you dared me. the shivering intrument. 
tuning our bodies to this passage. clouds moved as quilts. 
until morning, we used the forks to eat cool fresh dirt. 

comet 

i take care of each new fire like a limb.
kneeling, i tell my catastrophe it has my eyes. 
the family is burning down the house one tv at a time. 
with my telescope, i walk out into the middle of a hurricane city.
the wind sings dead people songs & the rain 
comes down like wedding rings. a disaster is also a great love. 
when i lost my doorways, every night i made a coffin 
for my memories to lay down in. you can grieve so much
it becomes a being. putting my grief in a stroller, 
i deliver it down to the crater at the edge of time 
where cats turn back into birds. i say "this is when 
you destroyed my world." the comet laughs like a child. 

baseball field heaven

with our fingers, we trace circles around each other 
in the orange-red dirt. to be dead is to be
a baseball player. teeth full of grit.
we take turns outfield-standing; making sun dials
of our bodies. one of us says, "it is noon"
& he says it every hour. the stadium is 
a far away story. sometimes we stare out 
& say, "i think i see it." a glint of sliver
suggesting a bleacher. none of us remember hot to play 
but i remember how it felt to put my fingers
through the chain link fence. we go out to pitch at the sky. 
i say, "home run" as the ball is eaten by blaring light.

clothes pin gossip

one clothes pin says to another,
"i remember when he was a woman."
a wire spills from the house like a vein.
you hang up night gowns & communion dresses.
meanwhile, in laundry room, the children crouch 
& look for credit cards. they want to buy
a shiny new life. everything is damp. rain comes 
with shards of glass. the new chemical makes the birds 
into telephones. incoming calls from a dead lover.
he used to rub your back. you saw mushroom clouds in his irises. 
"the wind will take anything" says the other clothes pin.
you undress, then try to take off your skeleton too.

bowling pin

you break down the door with a letter opener
but i hide the secret beneath the fall-down stairs
& won't be giving it to you. intruder alert.
cellar door cellar door. she says, "let's get coffee."
they talk about how all games are all either 
about wanting touch or about knocking the whole city over.
she wants to be touched. he wants to knock the whole city over.
godzilla sits in the bay weeping. we go to console him 
with a packet of fruit snacks & a bowling ball. 
he thanks us. we become pins standing side by side.
isn't that just like me? to offer myself as a video game.
i don't give up the secret at least. my bruises are ripe planets.

animal chalkboard 

i close my eyes & peel an orange. 
the orange is not an orange but a fist. 
uncurl the fingers wrapped around a pen drive 
that's full of confessions. 
one of them is i used to write "i love you" 
on the chalkboard & pretend that by erasing it, 
i was sending it to someone else. i want to celebrate myself 
the way birds do unquestioningly. 
just yesterday, i saw a blue jay swoop down, 
a flower in his beak. he said, "summertime summertime" 
like a skipping record. the orange wasn't sweet. 
was full of seeds. the "i love you" comes as an animal rain.