arcade token

let me borrow your teeth.
i need a neon way out of all
this gender. we used to go when
we had nothing else to say to each other.
there was a mirror to laser gun
until the tokens were huge & trophy.
on the television were videos
of our fathers punching each other
until it was just a football place
& not the european kind. i loved
that fake money. to gather it in my hands
without all the digital that has been
stealing our scarce whimsy. 
shooting dinosaurs. shooting a plane.
shooting in a hallway of dice.
there were kids too. their hands like birds.
we seldom played together, instead,
came there to chop up ourselves
into bigger pieces. a teleportation machine
gave us brief glimpses of a volcano place.
i wore makeup back then & my face
melted as the night went on. we ate candy 
in the parking lot behind the mall
waiting for an engine to take us.
all those lights like canaries
in my eyelashes. i never really won anything.
sometimes a plastic holy statue 
or banana taffy. i think we could all use some help
unraveling. a shrine to give in the glow &
the tunnel. i remember most the quiet
of the street outside. the purple & green 
shadows cast from our skeletons. 
i think you still loved me
or else we were making it work 
which is what everyone says when
the arcade keeps their fingernails.
a mouth is sometimes a window
but most often a purse full of tokens. 
did you hold my hand? did we win somewthing? 

drain

the summer i lived with the aunts
none of their drains worked.
we did not talk about the loud things
& instead we all had our own little conversations
with the ghost of aunt joan who died
just the year before. she refused
to hover. she was never a formal person
& she hated all expectations of being a ghost.
she liked to laugh & sometimes she switched
the television away from the phillies game
just to upset aunt flo. i got familiar
with a bucket. ferried bath water to
the overgrown yard where the pear tree
bore fruit for the last time. when we got lazy
the house would flood. each room 
a fish tank. i played the old electric organ
while holding my breath & aunt mary's
newspapers bleed until they were just 
blank paper. i always tried to get up before them
but it was hard because aunt flo sometimes
slept in the living room to avoid aunt joan.
i didn't blame her. we are not all ready
for the dead to come back. once & only once
i reached into the drain. i had had enough.
i just wanted to wash my face
without the world collecting in a murky pool.
i felt hair. not clumps like your typical 
nasty drain. instead, it was long & flowing hair.
dark & rich. the hair my aunts had 
when they were young. i pulled back,
terrified of discovering their whole selves
attached & alive. i come from a family
of questionable acceptance. a bucket by the door
still dripping from my aunt's bath. 
the smell of their soft rose soap. aunt joan
knocking the landline of the receiver again
as if to say, "why don't you talk to me?"
i stood in the yard, eating a pear & letting
the juice drip down my chin. 

oboe recital

despite how horrible i was at playing it
i loved the instrument. 
i craved the smooth keys & how they listened
to the softest touch. sometimes
on the floor of my bedroom i would
inspect each ligament. peer through
the vertebrae of my oboe like a telescope.
stars waved hello through my window. 
i was terrible mostly because
i was not fond of practicing. my tongue
was always too big for the double-reed
or maybe the reed was too small. 
when my teacher played i always thought
it sounded like ghosts trying to remember
how to talk. more often than i'm proud of 
i gave up all together in the middle of a concert.
i would hold the reed in my mouth.
poise my fingers, and play nothing
at all. move my hands as if the sound
of the whole fifth-grade band was coming
from the throat of my ghost. 
other kids shouted from their horns
& smacked the shoulders of their big drums.
i let my machine be the telescope. a hallway
without any fluorescent lights. my hands
getting bigger until they could carry
the moon. our songs were sluggish 
& strange. the work of a flock of geese 
misremembering all formations. 
after two years we gave my oboe back. 
it was just a rental. i missed it when it was gone
though i felt like maybe i had wrong it.
like maybe if i had wrestled with it longer
i could have gotten its voice & talked 
to the ghosts who emerged each night
from the corn fields around my house
in their own symphony of contours & dark. 

firefly dinner

i learned how to eat stars
from the fireflies who 
knit their own sky 
shoulder to shoulder
with gutters & the billboards. 
you cannot let the capitalism light
kick the glowstick out of you. 
there are berries & persimmons who grow
on the side of the big white knuckle highway. 
sometimes when i call a friend
it feels like weaving. i open my mouth
& there are all the galaxies i have
swallowed & who have swallowed me.
my one dog likes to kill stuffed animals 
& toss their cloud guts all over the bed.
she would make a good comet
& i see that for her one day. i refuse
to imagine us as stop signs or guns. 
sometimes i wonder if the planets
write poems about our smallness
just like we write poems about
their gigantic faces. when i came home
& the house did not have legs
i was relieved. the monsters who live
in the woods by the driveway 
demanded some kind of offering
in exchange for my absence. i brought
them an apple from the discount bin.
maybe those seeds will turn into a star.
a bright & wild glowing thing
right in my yard. right beside
where the fireflies used to talk 
before autumn came with a shovel.
i learned everything i know from
the fireflies. how to say goodbye without
saying goodbye. the last one at the end
of the august. a little high five voice.
i call you on the drive back. the early dark.
i wanted to make sure you were
still there. that you were coming home too.

moon garbage 

the moon pulls through
the kfc & i watch as she just orders
mashed potatoes & tosses the container 
in the parking lot for the rats.
you think there are 
coyotes everywhere. gods i wish
there were. i could use someone
to chase me into the underworld. 
instead we just get the neighborhood 
dogs who wish they were a pack.
on the right night they 
get together to pretend. one of them
is the leader & he gets really wild
with it. you tell me the coyotes 
would eat us & i explain that 
i have spent my life ready
to become part of something greater. 
i love cleaning up trash because 
it makes me feel less useless. 
the microplastics in my brain
tell me we should buy a boat
& ride it across the dark water 
until we reach the moon. there are
no supermarkets but there is 
a really sweet bodega which is
all anyone could ever need. 
a car loves there too & she is
the makeshift coyote. the divine 
is constant but always leaving. 
maybe i think that where i come from
cashing is holy. a language a lover.
you are always what is just out
of your reach. on tiktok late
at night someone dms me to ask,
“are you cleaning up after the moon?”
i lie & say, “of course not.”  

fire ants 

this week i have thought 
way too much about my 
high school boyfriend. he had 
long thin fingers & he was three years
older than me. we come upon 
a colony of fire ants & i remember 
how once he called me screaming—-
he begged for a water slide or else
a place to de-bone. he had stepped
on a fire ant hill beside his
grandparents pool in florida.
i didn’t know how to help him
& so i just screamed too. 
all of this makes me think
of the lives i am living 
right now in other peoples heads. 
if maybe when he sees a wild snake 
he thinks of me. i wanted 
to impress him. show him how
i was unafraid of venom or
scales. once i caught one
beneath the bridge by his house. 
the mushroom fields were cooking
near by & so the air smelled like
sweet manure & dark. the snake writhed
just like me. his parents weren’t home
that day. my body was a jungle gym
for the boy world. i think of him
not like a lover but like a species. 
i talked to him only once 
years after we broke up. it was 
over facebook. i deliberately do not
remember what we said. there are 
more ants than people by
a long shot. i stop to stare 
at one fire ant hill 
on a street corner in a town
i’ve never been before. all the ants
are screaming. i do not know
who i am on the phone with. 

walmart parking lot 

you told me to meet you 
in the walmart parking lot. 
the sky was holding a knife.
in the u.s. every highway goes
the same place. there is a gas station
without any eyes & 
a restaurant too good to be true.
in oklahoma the land lays down
like i’ve never seen. somehow
despite their hoard 
i find you in the walmart 
parking lot next to a faceless truck.
inside it’s like a portal. 
i am small again just looking
for a palm of sugar. i used to love
to run away from my mom 
in our walmart & now i just run away
from time. a blanket in the sky.
the hotel where the door opens
right to the kfc. i don’t want to
go home. i want to make a walmart 
rosary. find a well & drink deeply.
push a shopping cart until we find
each other or else a face that’s good 
enough for tonight. 
you want to get in & out. i could 
spend forever here. counting birds.
a tour bus lets out. it was full
of coyotes. they are looking 
for their teeth too. i suggest
we join them but you just furrow 
your brow. we drive through 
a hole in the sunset. collect pecans. 
start driving again. 

extinction

sometimes the gone animals
talk through the new ones.
i open my mouth & speak dodo
into a microphone at a rally
about trying not to die.
when people ask me,
"are you alive?" i respond in
the old calls of iguanodons
who carried their eggs like
footballs into the fire. when i was
small i became obsessed with
the death of the universe after hearing
a priest say, "it could come any day."
i learned the sun has a pretty long time
to go which i found unnerving.
how many more mistakes & hungers
will this little wedding ring hold?
i sometimes consider if there was
a universe before this one. if those creatures
had dreams of permanence.
if they wrote their histories in
some kind of stone. if when i open my mouth
there are fragments of their longing.
their poems & their catastrophes.
the last tasmanian tiger turned into
a rainstorm in a zoo with only
black & white photographs. i look at her
& i see my own teeth. i reach
into her mouth & pull out a star. 
she says, "do not leave me." i promise not to. 

virtual reality dad

a new experience to 
plug the drain at the bottom
of your longing. there are
several options. you can have
a supportive dad or a wayward dad 
or a dad who is furious
in the dark. the best experiences
are when you combine options
for a more lifelike experience.
he can teach you how to shave. he can
scold you when you are out too late
& the moon no longer has legs.
he can call you when he's drunk
& neither of you know what
to say to each other. in game mode
he can chase you & it can be playful
or a horror movie or 
desperate like, "please do not
leave me." there is a rumor that
the developer spent years collecting dads
in a little satchel. that he spun 
their veins like wool to make 
the virtual reality dad. i wonder 
if he managed to capture mine.
his particular melancholy. the last time
i was home i walked in on him
with his very on vr halmet on.
he was on a beach. he described it to me.
he said, "it's bermuda. it's just like
i remember it." a sweating beer
in his hand. ragged t-shirt. his
beige wrinkled feet & crooked 
toe nails. i love him & i want 
to join him. there is only one headset
so i just shut my eyes. turn on my
imagination machine & swear that
i feel the heat from a tropical sun. 

water pressure

on the night the pipes burst
there were geese in the field. 
the sound of 
a cut morning. water from
the well dungeon. our hands
soaked. our bones like oars
in water. i begged for the water
to stop. the gushing. i thought
the earth was going to flood
& we would have to become
amphibians again. my gills 
like skirt pleats. there is 
never enough time to 
stop a storm. a thumb on
the vein of a hose. sharks in the water.
ghosts in the sharks. i do not
remember which one of us
realized we could cut the power.
we stood there for a long time
just dripping, knee-deep 
in feathers. the geese did not flinch.
instead they laughed to each other.
i waited until you walked away
to weep. i remember why
it had been a long day but these last
few years have felt like rosaries
of long days. the night, always 
rushing to chew on my ear.
i cupped my hands & lifted 
this tiny pool of water. did not see
a warbling face like i hoped to.
just the dark. the earth's belly
meeting air. it is so strange the balance
between gather & burst. 
it took three days to get the water back.
by the time we did, the geese were gone.