loading screen morning

everything was tropical 
in the sweet sense. or else
the backdrop for my life
had leaves big enough
to conceal all my wanting.
i should stay here all day
with beach balls over my head
& try to make sense
of where a soul is stored.
i collect the jam jars
after they are emptied of boldness.
the birds that knit nests 
of wires. hear the old telephone
in their calls. hello hello 
hello. i am not quit there yet.
i could sleep another slice.
drinking a bottle of ocean 
& hearing the whale calls.
so we don't get stuck 
the landscape becomes another 
photograph taken by someone who said
now now now. unearthing your
desire to become a hope chest.
the rings i want to wrap around you.
a knife i carved from soap. 
does no one else hold their whole day
in a cast iron pan. i look for grease
under every rock. soon my brothers & i
will have to reckon with 
who stole whose names. i had
a pocket knife i used only
for cutting out my own tongue.
waiting for it to grow back.
pinwheel sun. expectation for rain 
again & again until a flood 
is our neighbor. until another planet
hunches in the lake water 
drinking her fill. sometimes
i imagine driving my old volvo
up to a drive through window 
to the past. asking for polaroids
of the blue plastic swimming pool.
candy dream eyes tumbling.
the wickedest fruit. i pluck
another hour from beneath the pillow.
your body isn't a visitor quit yet.
instead, i have the graham cracker world
all to myself. i tell the future 
to collect only the smoothest rocks.
i am not sure what i will do with them.
standing by the drawn curtains
air full of spinning moth wings. 

t-rex meat

we started to devour like tourists.
eating the not-ours of the not-ours. 
marshmallows stuffed in our cheeks 
so we didn't forget we were
supposed to be silent. the world
left all her foot prints on the porch.
when i am hungry
i am destroying something.
a billowing dress that can
only be worn once. i am wondering
if it is dangerous to see myself
prehistoric in an off-white gown.
i tell myself i am a presnt-tense man
with all my toolbox ready 
to be put to work. sitting 
at the dig site with a pick axe
in my hand. the dinosaur knew nothing
of how sweet it tasted. savoring fossil
& searching for bird. we are all
descendants of one disaster 
or another. passing a piece of meat.
starting the fire in the middle
of a the past & waiting for it
to climb into day light. nothing else.
that's what you don't understand.
there was nothing else. just bones
& what feathers we could find to chew on.
carrying my talking knife 
down to the excavation. he says,
"you are thinner than you've ever been."
i plung him into t-rex muscle.
tell him "it is time to work."
everything is salt. the trees even.
bitter & urgent. lightning arrives
like sinew. none of us go to bed full.
i ask the knife, "did anyone ever
eat enough?" the knife cuts a knotch
in my finger & says,
"an eye for an eye."

feathers in the yard lead to an eaten blue bird

i miss the way you used to 
make a swing set out of my mouth.
back & forth. catching mosquitos
& promising to make them fireflies.
god is a bread crumb trail 
devoured behind you by song birds.
i found a gun in the attic & tested the trigger
pointing at the window. what if
it had gone off? i wasn't prepared
for more fragments than i already have.
flushing a razor down the toilet
because i don't trust myself.
i walked outside. it was the spring
of our elegy--the one with televisions
& a firepit. social distancing 
meaning six feet in all directions.
bodies beneath the dirt, 
building their pebble collections.
to be human is the gather. i went
into the yard to be alone. sometimes
i used to just walk back & forth
as a child--letting my mind become
a snake nest. i saw a blue feather
& then another & then another.
oh how you used to lay them for me
all around our apartment
leading to the bedroom then to
your chest. terrariums worth 
of tarantulas. i tell you "you are
a different person" but only 
you are not there. you are not
anywhere at all. when i tell people 
how you pulled at my threads 
they say "i'm so sorry" as if
a person weren't always a sum of 
all their parts. i want to be 
the skeleton found sometimes.
a blue bird skull. a wing. 
the trail, like a new limb.
here i come. here i was. here i am. 

current

at night i find the river
that threads each day into the next.
wash my needle in the sink
& sew a patch into my skin
to stop the light from 
leaking out. i tell my friend
across the table, "i wouldn't mind
living forever if i could do it
without my body." scratching tallies
on the inside of a trampoline.
spitting a lily out in the sink
& crushing it into the trash can
so no one can see. i light candles
as if they might destroy the world.
breathe handfuls of rust. 
in the current, boats of ghost travelers
try to decide where & when 
to get off. some unborn.
some born so long ago they are
unsure where they could haunt
if they wanted to. i bought 
a necklace of fake pearls
& i wear it like a soul. searching
for what it could mean to take
the water & do whatever it asks.
bathing like only muses do.
there is a painting of me
in a museum, i am sure of it.
a me from baskets of moons ago.
biting an apple to find it
rotten & seeping with dead leaves.
consider what i would need
to go up stream. a speaker 
beneath my bed plays dream sounds:
crickets & cat birds & bells.
i do not tell anyone this is 
where i go when the hall light
is put to rest. kneeling
& dipping in & out of a cure.
telling myself softly
not to fall in. 

ghost currencies 

trading dead moths & bees,
the ghosts sit in the attic
& talk about tastycakes.
how once they could taste
soft yellow cake & once feel
powdered sugar on their fingers.
the house is made of backwards.
a little boy whose head fell off.
two women with teeth for eyes.
what they don't tell you 
about death is you can grow.
your spirit asking all the questions
it wasn't allowed to in life.
a man with the heaviest boots.
he paces & paces. birds fly 
from his mouth whenever he opens it.
amoung them i sit as a little girl
playing with plastic dinosaurs.
i tell them i understand it is 
hard to hand fingers when there's winter
always coming to pluck them. 
i wear my hair in two pony tails.
the ghosts give me beetles
& napkins & thumb tacs.
wisdom is a caurousel. always coming
back around to the body you are.
not from age or experience 
but from radio tower spines.
i tell the ghosts i want to be 
one of them & they tell me the sun
is made of mandarin orange today.
that i should eat. that i should
hold a penny like a new face
& see what else will open.
they cannot leave the attic
despite my begging. i do not want
to remember my blood & my legs.
i want to be rich in the currencies
of the dead. i want to see
what they do. once, i asked the girl
what i looked like & she laughed 
& said, "a dark sea of pillars."
when i returned i looked in the mirror
& tried so hard to see it.
instead, i just saw a moth 
banging his head against 
a white hot bathroom light.
i waited for him to fall. 
his little windup toy life.
collected him as tender. 

in the bunker

we prepare for collision
or rapture. what words do you use
to describe the coming extinction of milk?
i am leaving footprints 
as i go down. there will be 
trails of bird seed for monsters
to eat as they follow.
stock pile jars of god.
canned holy water. carving our names
in the dirt. tally marks.
my father used to spend
months in the basement where
he would teach the mice 
how to sing pslams. feeding them
bottle caps until they choked.
in the end we are all just throats
held up by wind. on the mountain,
no one would know we are here.
biting our finger nails down 
to skin. remembering when
we didn't know there were 
such things as missiles. 
instead, our hearts were stuffed
with pie tins & soup ladles.
i never intended to keep going.
always imagined being
one of the first to become 
a honeysuckle bush. instead,
here i am. counting lightning strikes
as they get closer & closer 
to my skull. in the bunker,
light is savour only in teaspoons.
i feed you one & you shiver
with delight. i ask you,
"what would you like to see
when we emerge?" you say,
"peanut butter." i say,
"a mirgration of butterflies
none of which are on fire."

heaven drive-in movie theater 

i didn't mean to be fickle.
the angels come to burrow
in the fresh dirt. seasons come
like worms. i walk the miles needed
to find the drive-in where a movie
of flowers blooming plays
forward & back. i was told by
a dead deer on the side of the road
that i was dead too. i did not
take her word for it. she was 
too crooked to tell what my feet
were walking on. broken mornings 
bleeding yolk on the kitchen floor.
the screen is a bowl of figs.
no cars by mine in the audience.
i check the backseat for strangers.
listen & hope for no videos of myself.
all around the forest animals 
watch too. they ask each other
if we get to share the same 
afterlife or if we all go into
our thousands & thousand of caves.
lighting a candle just to see
the dreamscape. the manna glistening
on plates of gold. all for me.
we all want to believe we will
be rewarded or at least compensated.
the angels make shadow puppets 
& laugh at the ways morals
roll their hope down every mountain
they can find. i get out of the car
& walk towards the screen
as a film of my brother & i 
by the ocean spills so vividly 
from the screen that i can feel splashes
of salt water. then, the film cuts.
just my empty bathroom. a centipede
meandering across the floor. 
my shadow cast on the screen.
i close my eyes & open my hands 
as if they might fill with caramel.
the dead deer stands up 
& scatters into the deeper woods
where there are entrances 
to the otherworld everywhere.
still, we all have the act of passage.
release. i am not dead but i do
have conversation with them.
turn on my car before the credits.
more & more vehicles filling the lot.
no where to turn around.
shadows inside, eager to see 
what the projector has to say.
abandoning the old car 
just to walk home along 
the winding forest roads. 
in bed that night, the projector finds me.
puts a movie on the ceiling
as i try to sleep. i tell myself,
"i am alive. i am alive."

on star burials

we take the heavenly body
& wrap it in pink tissue paper.
edges singe. the star
lays like a guava or a mango
in the palms of my hands.
still warm from centuries of use.
i remember how when i was small
my father held me up to change
light bulbs inside the porch lamps
because only my hands were small enough
to reach inside. light bulbs 
cool & dead bird in my arms.
my father & i with our hiking boots
& our backpacks full of gardening tools
for digging. what did your father
teach you how to burry?
mine was big on star watching.
he told me he had wanted to be 
an astronomer but instead
ended up a grave digger for stars.
watching them through the night
& waiting for one to flicker & 
go dark. hotel signs that blink
on the highway between here
& the next town over. we sleep
in parallel beds. the bible is 
a lunar landing. satelittes
in butterfly nets. he has to make jokes
about the star in order to make
our task less solemn. he says,
"Why couldn’t the star stay focused?
He kept spacing out." the star whispers
a story about a falling tower.
terrified, my father instructs me
to start breaking earth. the worst part
is when the star is remembering.
fires & darkened skies & the lovers
of so many stones ago. 
we burry them in the backyard 
& sometimes if i put my ear to soil
i can still hear their ghosts.
they say, "it is gone anyway"
& "he used to hold me. he used to."
fading is a sacrament.
patting the earth as we walk away.
he will not speak to me for days after.
i'll pick up the phone.
a call from him. just silence.
filling his pockets with white hote comets.
i always wonder if he finds a place
to sob like i do. beautiful beautiful star.
heavy & sleeping. sometimes,
i wish they would all wake up
& make embers of what i know.
i wonder where they go. a new sky.
this time indigo instead of black.
above the heads of other creatures
& their fathers & their hungers.

glory / glory / hole

salvation was an entrance.
here is where i am not nothing.
i am the appendage & you are
the other side of the lincoln tunnel.
holding my breath. i promise 
not to invent a new devotion
for where your body begins.
finally, a wall meaning freedom
or else a fallen cleaver.
we all want to be castrated
to know what if might feel like
to run around like statues.
i find you here after 
treasure maps spoke my life
into existence. i pictured your hand
pressed to the wall. taking me
& me taking you. i think of
the word "dispenser" & wonder
i have already become post-human.
then, crouching
where i used to in the woods.
a limestone kiln covered in vines.
i would enter & run my fingers
across the cool stone walls.
this is the hallways i meet you in.
your face populates every ceiling.
i look down at us. see the illusion
of the divider. ask for your last name
& address for me to send you
flowers on our anneversary.
to be anonymous is not to be
no one--it is to be everyone.
i am the pleasure you wanted
& you are mine. straining as if
a mouth could open wider. the teeth
like row houses. snake hearts wrapping
around the dark. then a release.
spitting out the sun on
the sidewalk. concrete confessionals.
wondering what it would take
to step through a hole so small.
considering peering through.
my only telescope. but it is
too late. you are gone. 

rattlesnake roundup

we believe in catch & release.
hunting only for the sake of
capture. a metal hook
to hold the snake at length.
everything in this world 
coils in an 's' shape.
this means ready
to strike. the children run 
in circles. crouch to share
a tray of shoestring fries
dreaming of snaring their own. 
rattles that buzz & thrum.
an instrument of questions.
"when will you fear me,
when will i fear myself?"
we are not the only species
to celebrate arrests but we are
maybe the most ceremonial.
men who save belt buckles 
for standing in mountains 
of rattlesnakes. hands on their hips.
we pluck one from the rest,
explain you need to hold the snake
right behind the head
where he cannot whip around
to bite you. the children
practice on each other. 
a boy covers his eyes 
& his mother tells him he is
missing everything. running,
participants imagine themselves 
in duels with the wild. as if 
they were not also born
in the forest. holding snakes
down to measure them. writing numbers
to dercribe an encounter 
with scales. all their ribs
like angel teeth. milking 
venom to fill cups after cup.
we tell the snakes they are
visitors & soon they will be
sent back into their privacy.
hollows & dark. sunning themselves
& thinking of our faces. round
as personal moons. they are not
afraid of us. they are maybe
furious. maybe grateful.
maybe both at once. wishing they could
fill us with cold blood.
cover us in scales. we take off
our boots boy the door.
check them in the morning 
for snakes. worry about retribute
& the rule of threes. whatever
you give to the world
comes back three fold. 
this time next year we know
we will have to wear this again.