living in a fireplace

saying, "this is not so bad,
this could be so much worse,"
when the man with grape fingers 
comes to deliver more wood.
hungry as our lives are. famished 
& in need of good dry timber.
my brother & i take turns breathing.
find a corner of the structure 
where air arrives as mice.
what i wouldn't give to be 
a campfire or at least a smoke house.
i remind myself i live inside 
a promised heat. tomorrow the wood floor
will blush because of us.
the forest outside is a machine
for the blaze. taking handfuls of ash
& blowing in each other's faces.
laughter crackles & pops.
i tell my brother he is brave
as his head catches fire again,
deforesting his skull. we are 
glossy & molten. i do not actually think
me or him are brave. i think we 
needed a place to live & i think
without the fireplace we would just
be rotten apples underneath 
the distractable moon. instead 
we have light. cut shadows in 
any backdrop. invent birds with
our skeleton fingers & send them
to eat everything red & alive.
at night when the fire wants
to be embers, the man comes
breathing on them until they catch again.
rest is a planet of fuel. the sun 
tucking strands of hair behind her ears.
my father is not the man but 
they look almost identical. 
i ask my brother if he thinks 
we'll ever leave & he shrugs to say,
"we are alive, aren't we?"
i am not sure we are but i love him
& so i lie to him. i say,
"yes, yes we are."

my brother & i do not catch the bird

& the bird is very expensive.
is not covered by insurance.
but we want the bird. we need the bird.
saw the bird in the yard
while we watched from our bedrooms.
never intending to be children
my brother & i decided the bird
could make us whole. 
his brown-speckled feathers 
& thumb-sized beak. watching worms
write their poetry on the sidewalk
after a spring rain. i would try
to sleep but all i could see was
the bird. bigger & bigger.
the size of my head & then 
is tall as me. then, i was the bird
i wanted to catch. hang feathers
in the closet like dresses.
to have the bird would mean
nothing else could get away.
we ran so fruitlessly. tripping &
scrambling in the grass. bird with
his wings & trees. i am jealous 
of the bird. to be wanted.
to be chased. i have been captured
too many times to count. in fingers 
& blankets & closets 
& once by a broom.
my memory tells me i have experienced
more pain than i'm supposed to talk about. 
i laugh because i also know 
my brain is a knot of lies. 
picture this: a family of birds 
& you are the human. 
need to microwave meals. need to 
use a telephone. i thought i had
my hand finally wrapped around the bird.
it was just my brother's wrist.
i wished for a second i could
just turn him into a bird. 
afterall, don't we all have a duty
to pretend to be exactly what
our loved ones need? i let go 
& he rubs his wrist. he is not a bird.
the bird is in the branches
so near. a feather falls at my feet. 

rabbit stencil

i give you all my nervous
parameter. in the chewing,
we were blades. tracing paper 
sprawling across the day. 
my outlines like stairwells.
you wanted a rubric for a future us.
the rabbits perch cupping 
single little jewels in their hands.
some of them hold secrets
passed down from father to father
to father. the rabbits are careful
to not think of the secrets too often.
they are afraid someone can 
hear them thinking. the rabbit arrives
to my doorway on the day i am 
barely visible. my outline
turned to snakes. the rabbit confesses 
the sun was born out of envy.
two stars making bets over comets.
this is why we have to feed
like we do. the rabbit weeps
that he has given away all he has.
i tell him we can invent a new secret.
crouch down. i whisper something
i cannot tell you or else 
it wouldn't be secret. rejoicing.
the rabbit suggests i try 
becoming a picture book. 
i tell him i will consider it.
nostalgia for the earliest destructions.
how they once promised catelogging.
my outline in a book of outlines.
now it's just you & a gallery 
of rabbits. you say i should 
be more positive. taking charcoal 
to make me a pond vibration.
the rabbits press their secrets
beneath their tongues.
i am undone. pond vibrations.
the ripples that soundwave
from every edge. you say
the rabbits are staring at us
from the front yard. i tell you
to close the curtains & help
me figure out again 
where my face begins. 

forest escalator

we took the machine into canopy.
asking each other "which up
are we going to be?" a sky is
an egg-ceiling. all the bird 
dying & falling past like hail storm
or broken beads. do you remember
when the earth was flat? 
how we could walk for days & find
the ledge to stare off of.
final trees of the forest
gripping tight onto the conclusion.
now, every sentence ends with 
a tiny earth. or is it a cherry seed?
making the wild more modern.
inviting visitors to see
the horizon's contact lens.
i never wanted to leave the ground.
in fact, i would not have given up
on the all-fours life. 
lizards & me. the forest is always
growing taller. pushing the beach ball sun
back & forth in the air. 
so many people next to me 
walk downward as the escalator
moves up. perpetual legs. 
i listen to the direction.
go higher & higher. past the ghosts
of elephants who hover just above
the trees & past the threat
of thunder. below the forest becomes
a patch of strawberry tops.
goodbye birds. i grow feathers
to fill that space. my eyes 
plant what i need. dirt waterfall.
"where are we going?" i ask another.
he becomes a cluster of snakes.
i consider jumping but instead
request the mechanism send me back
as a droplet of water. 
a voice says, "sure, whatever."
i plummet & seep into the soil below.
the others, i am unsure what became of them.

heaven on earth

i hit an angel with my car.
no blood at all, just a mess 
of milk & feathers.
did not package the body,
simply hoisted them in a heap 
on the side of the highway.
inspected their thousands of eyes
& wished they could say something more.
lately, i am visited by gold
that is not mine. gate after gate.
my neighbor who listens for 
bells before running outside to pray.
heaven is a place of obedience
or so i am told which makes it
one in the same with earth.
i saw another angel sipping coffee
at the starbuck on hamilton street.
no one else seemed to see her.
what i want to know is what it means
to be toggling with an other world.
am i dying or just stripping away
whatever seam there used to be.
guilt from killing the angel with my car
has been devouring me from the inside.
unlike humans though, no one comes
to remember a dead angel.
i ate more than the museum in sadness.
a spiral staircase bloomed deep 
into the marble depths of a grandmother.
how could we get this far without 
telephones? calling through the night
until the ring was just another opening.
wanting the dead angel to answer
from the other side of the other side.
i find a cabinet of curiosities
sitting at the bottom of a well.
a skull there signed by everyone
who wore it. face of all faces.
i am apologizing to the angel.
driving my car back to the spot
in the middle of the night
just to find them gone. only
a single feather where the body 
had been. telling myself they are
not dead at all. uncertain what
the criteria for assumption is.
i call a friend & then a lover.
neither pick up. i pull over 
& in the gravel scattered 
thin edge of the forest
i make my own little heaven
from rocks and twigs & fingers.
i say, "this is where my angels live."
stepping back, weeping. 
all i want to do is ask what they 
had been doing crossing the road
in the dark. whose soil is this anyway?
it is not mine, i am sure.
the clouds watch me with amusement.
another feather blows past in the breeze. 

humid boxing ring boy body

fishing for a breath in a downpour.
my bones were so plausible.
all the feet i had on the rubber mats
of the gym. how, i could work my body
into boy somehow. in fits of arms
& collision. biting down on 
a rubbery mouthguard. drool unspooling
from the corner of my mouth. 
i found my lips in a snarl gallery.
all the boy with their born-ready shoulders.
little men standing inside boy bodies.
men standing on our shoulders.
masculinity is a school of square lives.
finding the right angles. the ropes 
building a parameter to live inside of.
he punched me in the chest & then 
the stomach. doubled over i saw myself
from above. already shucked.
saw all the threads & the miniature gender
made of glass because after all
all genders are made of glass. 
looking through that supposed-to
& already should. sweat arrives like soldiers.
they say, "you don't believe us
but you have a body." i refuse.
drink water hungrily from a folding chair
while my father tells me i am 
not a man but i did good. good for 
whatever is beside boy. spitting 
the mouth guard into my hand & seeing
how the cis boys shoved each other
like love poems. in the bathroom 
i washed my masculinity 
& patted it dry with 
the brown papertowels. told my body
to try again another day. fighting 
had everything & nothing to do 
with trying to have a skeleton.
at night, the soreness arrived
like a flock of birds. all of them calling,
"you are you are you are."
i counter, thinking, if my gender is true
then why do i have to spar
to make it legible. 

hunger

before she died 
my grandmother ate everything.
living as a coat hanger.
so much empty space. i met her
for the first time it seemed
with her hands full of cream.
she held spoons like crucifixes.
grew a three-hair beard 
& stroked it. i was too young
to understand her cravings.
the kind of hunger that laid dormant
for all her life. 
remembering how when i was small
she would point a finger 
to stomach & say to my mother,
"they eat too much." watching her
cut her round potatoes into half moons.
living on half of the half. alone 
in her apartment what kind of desire
crept from corner to corner?
living with us she stole brownies.
moved on to eating whole forks
& tureens & soup ladels.
as if by eating them she could
regain all she had given. 
a sudden shock of need. the world
had cubes of sugar lined up
to make the horizon. we let her eat
whatever she needed. picture frames then 
& the images inside. her daughter 
& her daughter's daughter. her husband
long turned into a nest of roots.
did she think "all mine--finally 
all mine"? was it enough?
she died three days after it snowed.
we had to use steak knives
to dig in the frosted dirt.
the whole time we worked she laughed
& ate her last pieces of jewerly.
a stirng a pearls. a golden locket.
a cat-shaped brooch. 

rubber glove growing

i grew rubber gloves like children
on the fire escape & on every windowsill.
lonely & drifting farther away
from the word "family."
i told myself "i can make communion
from only doorknobs & light bulbs."
curled up & became a thumb.
this is how protection began.
my simple desire to not have skin.
blue gloves & purple & white.
the distance between flower & glove & father
& little one. i was the little one
in the town of dead-faced churches.
we walked farther than the road
knew what to do with. bears taking handfuls 
of garbage back into their geodes.
i put the gloves on each day & rooted
in the sky for a poison fruit
to hold & contemplate. one summer
i was obsessed with having pet toads.
finally, i captured two & set them
in a pale of dirt. in the morning 
they were two rubber gloves.
i spoke to them. i promised 
to stare at them all day long
if that's what they needed. in the end though
everything is a glove. worn & weathered.
i can use what you said as a barrier 
between the world & whatever self
i've kept from spilling. my gloves 
were the most beautiful though
in the whole neighborhood. i harvested.
laid them down like emptied hands.
where do you go to make 
all the hands the day 
will ask of you? all you need 
is a planter & a sense of terror.
they will bloom like mothers.
or, maybe, i am the mothers 
& they are, like i originally thought
just blooming like babies do.
new & ready to by made into balloons. 

easter egg hunt

i cut my tongue into seven pieces
& slipped each inside a colorful
plastic egg. hiding them carefully
around the halls of my high school
i waited, hoping to see someone 
open them. at the farmer's market 
i used to watch the butcher 
spill tongues into jars. cow
& pig & goat. all the talking 
a heart can do. i would picture
the animals roaming around empty-mouthed.
now i know they don't distribute meat
piecemeal. the animal is felled 
like a great tree. not me though.
i go bit by bit. watched in the mirror
as my tongue grew back cyclically 
after i severed it. it is not 
a murderable beast. pale blue eggs.
telling the world what i need.
sitting in a bucket of spit. 
this is when i learned i would 
not get anything i asked god for.
better to dismantle the wanting machine
than to keep telling the body no.
finally, by the water fountain
i saw a boy open an egg. empty. 
nothing inside. i remembered the tomb
is supposed to be vacant but i wonder 
what it means that a god comes
to collect himself & not the tongues
of his beasts. what is a miracle
but a kind of plastic. nests for 
ghost birds. eating jelly beans
by swallowing them whole. there is
not enough sugar to make the day right.
i decide to open an egg myself.
find no tongue inside. just a miniature
of me screaming. close the egg to put away
that horrible sound. burry the egg 
behind the pine tree & tell no one.
feel grateful i was not the one
to discover an empty tomb. i would
have filled it with tongues.
i have always been prone to crowding
a silence. i would love to try to furnish one
as big as a divine. instead, i will
stick to eggs. i wait for my tongue
to grow back again.

sleeping in the front lawn coffin

this isn't a yard sale
but you can take whatever you can get.
the moon is cooking eggs 
on a cast iron skillet. 
someone is playing music
from a tin-man car radio &
the birds & growing two heads this spring.
what i know about sleep is that
it's made of taffeta. both stiff
& smooth. i refuse to assume
the customary dead-person position
& instead i put my hands behind my head
to recline. when was the last time
you took a good look at the world?
i try to do so only from 
particular vantage points.
here from my coffin i can pretend
i am looking back on a great story
written by many tired candles.
no matter how much we want it
& need it, there is no such thing
as a narrative. i had a friend
who died like a broken dish.
nothing is leading up to this.
a few neighbors stop 
not to pay respects but to ask
what it is i think i'm doing.
one whispers i should be careful.
actions like this can prompt 
the future. i do not talk because
i am dead & the dead do not talk
at least not on command. they slip notes
beneath bedroom doors that say,
"run away while you still have time." 
asking aloud i always say, "from what?"
no response. wisdom arrives 
in cannibal baskets. the words
eating each other until all sense
is nothing but wooden spoons 
& soup bones. a strong gust of wind
shuts the coffin door & briefly
i am nothing but a nest of fingers.
outside the world puts every tomorrow
on a windowsill for the sake
of clementines peeled & eaten too quickly.
in a sense i am burried.
who knows though what happens
on the other side of any given wall.
i crawk out & leave coffin.
a journey for another day.
it is both morning & still night.