meteor carving

my teeth fell out of my face
then down from the sky.
every day is ending at once
like a simultaneous domino extinction.
i pull the blinds shut
& become a hunk of birds
hurtling through space. 
my friends sit & watch 
on the side of a hill. i am
one of them & i am fourteen
& she is a person full of so 
many holes. sometimes the wind
makes a flute of her. a song
is not always a decision.
i have my voice pulled from me
like spring onions from soil. once,
she found a meteor & took
a paring knife to its surface.
carved it into an eye 
just to watch it blink. 
a squirrel sits & eats 
planets while no one is watching.
they are mostly uninhabited.
well, that's no true.
populations are devoured every day.
i am looking. my brain 
is a panopticon for what
will end. i am not paranoid
i am primed for the tower.
lightning falling easily 
as fingernails. on the night
of the showers we prepared
to die. drank milkshakes 
as if our blood could hold
the sugar. a boy throwing rocks
at the road as if it were water.
as if he were the cosmos themselves
in need of regurgitation.
i saw then only through 
the meteor's eye. 
rapid light & a collage 
of dead girls. their bodies 
in rows on roof tops. 
all of them mine. missing earth
by a few seconds. letting out
our breath & hoping maybe for another.

dead & living hummingbirds

as if the cure were repetition,
i beat my wings with ghosts.
drink the flower dry & move on
to find another face. 
wore my chest as red as light
would let me. refractions of teal
sent like messengers from 
another galaxy's moon. how close
are you breaking? i find edges 
in every single seam. is this where
i will miss a beat? where i will plummet 
or where a photograph will leave me
without any oars. the boats 
are made with holes. the feeder 
is held like a lantern by
a man who owns an oil rig.
there is nothing left untethered
but us. no ground at all. 
the dead hummingbirds tell me
i am closer & closer. i ask
"to what?" to which they respond
with laughter. orbs of glass
drop from my beak. i am not
in the business of deciding
who is & isn't a hummingbird but
if you feel fine you might not
be a hummingbird. we have that need
to tread air. i woke up with
such a desire for sweetness.
all the emptiness. ghosts swallowing
their old sounds. how to turn
a name inside out. i stand 
in the garden we always asked for
trying to decide from who 
i will get my seance today.
everyone has their nectar.                        

i want to sleep with you inside a bell pepper

you always told me you wanted a ceiling
high enough for chandeliers.
you did not always tell me that.
i am lying but i can imagine 
how big your wants could get because mine
swell too. sometimes i want to live
in a mcmansion. how i might walk
from room to room to room in search
of a convenience. then, other days
i want to be the acorn's meat.
held like a fallen thumb & carried
towards never becoming as occupied
as a tree. i could not handle
that responsibility. my interest
is in the dirt & what you & me
might become there. truly, i would like
to be pith of an orange. seeds ringing
in a tangle of cirtus. lemon. lime.
tangelo. there are so many places to live
& so few keys to them. at flea markets
you can often find bins of antique keys.
the locks have long ago 
flown away to live in the bodies 
of tall tall men. in the fridge 
is a lovely orange bell pepper
with a sticker for a heart. 
i could cut the smallest hole.
just big enough for me & you 
to slip inside. we wouldn't have to
tell anyone at all. we could
have our own house warming.
laugh & hold the tiny poker-chip seeds
in our hands. breathe on them.
watch baby peppers grow. 
stave off rot with prayers. 
almost a chandelier--the white seeds
spilling from the living room ceiling.
you would sleep. i would sleep
& the shadows outside 
would mean nothing but ghosts. 

GPS directions to your house on the moon

you never told me you moved
but i assumed when i saw the moon
stippled red. i climb a staircase 
& you are not there. you were never
the sarcaphogus i thought. opening
every container you gave me 
in the hopes of finding a useful skull.
i open the window to make
moon water. by which i mean
i am doing magic with the thought
of seeing your space garden. pacing
my life like a hallway. painting
all the walls of the house black
until the space inside is only
as large as a grasp. did anyone notice
how alone i let myself be?
i am grieving the caves of myself.
pushing a shopping cart of cellphones
towards a blackhole. puncture wound.
digital clock. i take out my phone
whose battery i quickly becoming
a dead beetle. ask the machine
to take me to you. a blue umbilical cord
tethered to the moon. i follow myself
across a cheese clothe sky.
mesh & holes & holy. how to be
the muscle you need. unchanged.
you stood as a house inside a house.
holding my breath to survive
in space. your flowers all dried 
& petal blown in the galactic winds.
you are home & not home. you would not
remember me if i pleaded. that is not
how a heart works. cannot be made
to recall a face. the way dirt
spits toads back into the spring
after a long winter. my cell phone dies
& have no way home. i could jump 
of course & land in the wild ocean.
you talk to a mirror until it becomes
a whole separate mouth. i do the same.
how easy it is to find your own factions
if given a box to do so.
space ships break open. debris
makes a ballet across the stars.
there is no such thing as earth
for me to return to. inside your house
inside your house i knit my own.
sit quietly & hope you won't notice
i have written a future inside 
your present. do not mind me.
i am just spilling 
every parcel of myself.

city of chairs

sitting forward in row
& watching the sun become
a man again. a plate of fishes
passed & passed. no one eats 
fish anymore. the ocean lives
in a single glass. coming to visit 
the citizens of the city of chairs
peer inside. dip a finger
beneath what used to be a wave.
all part of a movement towards observation.
the walls peeling away like rinds.
first tall glass buildings 
& then a great shattering.
when i do my daily watching
i look at the backs of heads 
waiting for a tree to emerge--
grow from skulls. we are all in 
purgatory for believers. whatever we believe
is waiting to arrive. un-horsed chariots.
finding loopholes for chairs. 
counting a lover's vertabrae. 
stacking for a city scraper.
god says it will all be ready soon
& then we will go underground &
centuries later they will find 
miles of chairs & wonder how we lived.
i too am a historian wondering 
how we are living. smog that returns
like grandfathers to promise 
a new industry. we are producing
more chairs. when they are delivered 
we will have to decide what 
to do with them. a rumor says 
a chair can be used as a house. 
whole families who crouch beneath.
i should know. i lived under a rock
for as long as i could. the ocean shifts
loses a droplet. the whole city, seated,
weeps. new regulations. curfew.
narrows stretches of breath.
holding on to axels of light.
then, the urge to sneak out at dusk.
to grab the ocean & hold it up to my face--
looking through the depths
& imagine what it was once like
to watch the sun swell mammalian 
over ancient water. everything is so new.
i want an antique chair. 
or maybe one with a cupholder.
shifting desires. i learn to want less
& i am so good at it that i teach others.
someone says, "was it always
this purple at twilight?" i say,
"it was," even though i've never seen
the sky so ready to kneel. 

flower emoji

i'm saying yes i want so badly
to be put in the window. you wingow. 
fed packets of sugar as i 
cultivate all my pink & red.
drawing a picture of myself 
of myself. the twin mirror who 
follow each other into likenesses.
a picture of a flower comes
to smell like a flower. attracts 
bees who want to drink cellphone dry.
i put a flower into transmission
& you wake up in a nest of blossoms.
they digitally grow from your ceiling.
between my knuckles. typing 
"i love you" or "i love u"
or "i luv u." the garden networked.
designs of god. replica & replica.
every identical emotion 
that has escaped & come back to me.
hives arrive to swarm. the kind of honey
that can only arrive via notification.
we are thousands of miles apart
& i am trying to say "i'm sorry."
imagine a delivery man who i hire
to leave a single flower
on your doorstep for every sentecne
i write you. to come apart is a series
of flag polls farther & farther away.
they say glows like a phone flash light.
small point of light to follow.
only to discover the flower 
does not change. you could return
every single day just to find it
like this a face of a face. 
you open your pocketbook & there i am.
the doorbell rings. the door is just
a telephone call. you are just
split seconds away. but not at all.
telling you i am not sorry.
then eating the telling until
it bursts into garden. i plug
the flower in & wait. i know 
it is over for you & me. 

easter sunday mass inside a whale carcass

some people pay for jesus.
my boyfriend took me to an easter service
inside a purse. all the ladies 
sang like their voices were dimes.
i stood & dreamed of oceans. a place
to sink deep enough that god might be possible.
a collection basket with legs. beetles 
crawling from beneath an altar.
on the ocean floor, pale opal-eyed fish
travel for miles in search of worship.
the whale, whose heart was once a city,
now a corredor of emptying. his eyes 
dead light bulb planets. all the divinity 
he found in his travels. speaking softly
to giant squids. pulling lines of scripture 
from the sweep of the sand. 
wild as i am, i have never let myself sink.
sometimes i tie weights to me feet
& stand on the lip of a drain 
thinking maybe today will be when
i get to plummet. i am fearful. not of deep
but of holy & that there might not 
be the grandness i was promised. 
in my boyfriend's church they fed us sugar.
repeated the word "saved" as if it were
a speach act. crustaceans bring their eyes.
clip flesh from the church's body.
bones clutching bones. the ceilings 
with their white salt-ridden flesh.
this kind of glory only happens 
with distance from the sun. 
show me your darkness & i will show you
decay. earth force-feeding herself.
the fishes hymns as they work. 
they do not know lent is ending.
god will not rise, he will sink & sink. 

vacuum dancing

i took to excavating the apartment
at the end of each day 
as if to announce to the walls, 
"we were never here." standing in 
the kitchen & swaying with
ceiling fan. i felt grateful
for my enclosures. the number of
entrances between me & the bears.
the mountain outside the window
had flocks of wild & waiting.
no, i'm lying. i wasn't afraid
of bears. in fact, i wanted more.
left my back door open
in the hopes they might stumble inside
& make a disaster of me.
how glamorous that might be 
to be made a ribbon of fear for once.
i moved back & forth with 
my vacuum. calling her "darling"
& "sweet." her endless mouth.
the way she could take insider her
all my catastrophe just to spit it out
into a plastic bag. i am alarmed 
by how easy it is to dispose of
a day's worth of skin. she told me
not to worry. told me there would
always be more. getting down
on my hands & knees in the hallway.
following a centipede to a hole 
in the wall where his world
would be feathered & waiting.
telling my vacuum i wanted her
to call this a dance if not
a sacrifice. he never agreed 
or disagreed. simply followed me.
picturing those dance step diagrams
all across the splintered wood floor.
we live in such capsules. 
my vacuum asked me for one more round--
from the hallway to the bathroom.
then, no more. putting her back
into her stone-sleep & me into
my bear-waiting. 

every lake is a spiral galaxy

i want to still believe in tenderness.
the world has had me living 
with mouthfuls of glass. i talk 
& speak through thousands of days worth
of nests. wires necking above the city.
lakes come like cousins. i never knew
most of my family. they live 
with real doors & real tastes of green.
i told you yesterday i am going to
buy us a house so deep in the forest 
no one will believe we exist. 
i am worried that to be gentle
is to be not here at all. thinking of
lamb's ears & how they are listening
to every single harm. they are doing nothing.
at least the stones decide to grind
& fall & break into more of themselves.
there is a cliff i dream i was born from.
the sensation of losing a larger self
to become several smaller selves.
i collect my softness in marble pouches.
spill them at the feet of any tree
who wants to listen. a collective shrug.
on television somewhere we are selling
stuffed animals. they are arriving
in card board boxes. i want to purchase 
every thing i need. i want to buy 
a patch of clothe always large enough
to lay me down in. i cannot trust 
every glint isn't a waiting fracture.
the way i used to smile before
lightning killed the tree in the front yard.
that is a lie. my father cut it down.
with his bare hands. it was such 
a huge woman & she knew everything 
about the universe. wisdom leaves
without a tongue to trace. when i find a lake
i will not be sharing this knowledge 
with anyone. the opposite of soft 
is maybe hoarded. keeping & keeping.
my secret basin. the stars dart like minnows.
they don't even know what they are.

ice cream sandwich communion 

in the digital pasture
we found a church of pen caps.
everything was web 2.0 
but i wanted to know 
where the ice cream was. where
we were going to be fed.
i stay up at night thinking
of how & why there will cease
to be ice cream. in the days
of late-early apocolypse, i hoarded
all the ice cream i could find
until the freezers were empty.
stand in front lawns
with a spoon in my mouth 
waiting for god to come. we maybe ask
too much of each other. i want
someone to give me their body
between two soft chocolate cookies.
no spoon neccessary. just teeth.
waiting for the day's loading bar
to complete & yet here i am.
not fully rendered but fully
waiting to be glorious. i never met
a confessional that wasn't bugged
& live streaming. here is everything
i want to be destroyed for. here is
everything i for which i want 
to be loved. we break bread 
by which i mean we break our phones
ceremoniously. they were mad of chocolate.
we do not have a single notification. 
not in heaven. earth is losing 
all its green so we enter VR. 
touched the grass
like the back of a great animal.
eat the new synthetic ice cream 
which tastes like hollow eggs.
it is not holy like the kind
we knew. the kind animals became
omen for. licking cream 
from my fingers. i want to remember
what it was like to unwrap
salvation. bless my own mouth.
i no longer believe in sin.