grandfather barbershop 

my father gets his hair cut
from the old man at the flea market
whose hand shakes while he holds
the clippers. he has a beard that reaches
his chest. my father says he prefers
the conversation. doesn't mind
that his hair comes out uneven
& sometimes lopsided. he cleans up
the trim himself in the bathroom mirror,
leaving a scattering of thorny hair
in the sink. i do not ask
what they talk about but i imagine
maybe the old man is gentle in a way
my father needs. i didn't know 
my grandfather long. he lived in
a house without windows & an empty
chicken coop in the yard. he fed me
jelly beans. from what i gather, he was
a man skilled at disappearance. at fading
into ceiling & doors. my father never talks
about him unless it is to tell a story
in which he tried to climb into 
a cistern to escape the world or another
when the tornado ate the sister town
& he thought death was coming for him. 
i do not know if the barber man is 
a grandfather man but he must be something
to my father. i have passed the shop
many times. one little white window 
looking out at the fruit stands & antique 
talkers. the candy stripped poll spinning
like a melting ladder. i want to get my hair cut there
at least once but i wonder if it would be like
taking something from my father. this,
his father now. the scissors sitting in
a little dish of blue disinfectant.
my father likes his hair long just like my 
grandfather did. once black waves 
now peppered white. he has never said this 
aloud but i watch how he handles his hair
with tenderness. resists whenever
my mom tells him to cut it but always
gives in. walks up the tree to the market.

rubber tree

we planted a rubber tree in my room
when i was in fifth grade. it grew
purple red & spoke only in questions.
"who are we?" "where does the light go?"
i loved to ask questions back.
"where is the moon tonight?" "am i
old enough to miss my childhood?"
the rubber tree was a poet. i would sometimes
read to her. she would bask in the words.
i only had a few poetry books back then.
she liked emily dickinson the best. 
the next part terrible i am sorry
not to you but to the rubber tree. one day
i played with her leaves. they were thick.
nothing like the palms of the spearmint bush
by the side of the house or 
even the african violet by the sink. 
i tore the leaf following some forest brain impulse.
the rubber tree asked, "why did you do that?"
her blood was like milk. white & sticky.
an attempt to heal. i responded,
"what does it feel like?" she replied,
"have you ever lost a limb?" i had not & so
i did not have a question to give back to her.
i wish i could tell you that i never
did that again. the curiosity. no maybe it 
was hunger. maybe greed. i was not young.
not in the forest way. i came back. i wanted to witness
the blood. how thick it came. her wounds 
made her saint like. i never apologized. that would
have been more cruel. instead, i worked myself up
to asking her, "how many leaves are left in you?"
she was tired. sitting with a handful of
ragged soil. she asked, "how many have 
you taken?" i did not remember. each one though
pressed itself against my throat. sometimes
still i will get a little cut on my thumb
or my knee. the first moment the blood 
will come like the rubber tree. warm & white.
then, my animal nature returns red 
as mars at dusk. 

snow country machine

now you can buy the winter
& ship it to your house.
i see my neighbor with a snow country
machine & he is skiing in july.
he is taking a picture of his children
all dressed for the blizzard. all the birds
are asking each other, "where should
we go?" i explain to them that this is
just a new human horror & they sigh
& continue their elegizing in the dark.
the neighbor invites other neighbors 
& then everyone is winter. did snow
feel different on your face when you
were a kid or am i just nostalia-ing where
i don't need to? it felt softer or maybe
more real. like the raspberries that 
are born in one night. dark & almost red.
i remember one dusk my sibling & i laid
in the front yard while the world
was swallowed by snow. the sky,
a brown-black that only comes 
when the blizzard is deep & un-ending.
i thought of both of us becoming snow.
plummeting gently from a breath 
of a cloud man. i find myself jealous of
my neighbor's snow country machine
even though i do not even really want it.
i want to know if when he closes his eyes
that sometimes the snow feels red 
on his flesh like it used to for me.
if when he opens his mouth to catch
the cool crystals, they taste bright.
a see an ad for the snow country machine that says 
one day everyone will have their own device 
to give them everything they desire.
i doubt that because desire is always moving. 
i buy the machine. i do not even remember
doing it. the box is smooth. my neighbor,
still skiing sees the delivery ghost.
he points to the box & gives me a thumbs up. 

cereal aisle 

anything you can dream
can become a box of cereal. anything
you nightmare too. i have found myself
with a spoonful of roaches in the old apartment
where chairs flew out the windows. five more boxes & then
we will be the domino house. shoulder 
to shoulder with a coming catastrophe.
i knock a hole in the aluminum bag & all the pops
come singing. the kellogg man sits
on a pile of corn above my little perfect
sanitarium. in college i used to go to the grocery store
to feel human. i harvested cereal. carts full. 
more than i could ever eat. i think i wanted
to live like a prize inside. i stacked the boxes beneath
my bed. made my own cereal aisle. warplanes
flew overhead. a spoon sleeping in the grain.
i learned the names like doorbells. here is where
the raisins go clutching their sun. if i could
i would have a whole house of cereal. retro cereal
still in the boxes, the morsels turning to dust.
an attempt at eternity in their bonemeal. 
the kellogg man prescribes me a bowl
of everything. sends the crows to 
observe my progress. i eat in front of a television
that does not remember my name. the shopping carts
know where i live. they arrive in the yard.
graze on cardboard & the moon juice.
i try my best to not fill my lack with sugar
& worry but it is all i have ever known. 
if you hold a cheerio up to your eye you can
use it like a hagstone. it'll show you the future. 
when i look i always see bathtubs of milk. 
the shopping carts come inside & browse my aisles.
i lock the door so they can't leave. they whimper
& i feed them handfuls of froot loops. 

poem in which i am an activist 

i don't consider myself an activist.
i do like the idea of glory & revolution
but i was built for aftermaths. my lungs
are spore sewers. i come from a long line
of antique talkers. in my childhood home
a telephone from the early 1900s hung on 
the wall. i would sometimes listen to
the earpiece & hear the ghosts arguing
about the same hungers we have. in the backyard, my father
plants tomatoes & lets them grow wild
& untended. each fruit, a red giant.
when they all yield, we will be picking for days. 
i am so tired of wrestling with
the finger-eating machine. instead, i want
to build gills like mushroom folds. 
i see government buildings & i dream
of making them greenhouses. all laws are outlived
by the soil. if i was an activist, i wouldn't
last very long. i was burn bright. maybe wrap
a senator's house in a takeout bag & carry it
to the burning town in the mountains. 
i would not be bold enough to throw a shoe
at a governor but if i did, i would choose
my old stripper heels. maybe, if there were
enough of us, we would turn into horses
& trample all of their genocide stations. i do not want
to spend any more of our precious sun
trying to convince that which was designed 
to kill me, to keep me. so often i feel like
a throat lozenge in the mouth of another 
evil man digging holes for fence posts.
i buy a pocketknife & discover it is useful
as a garden spade. in the front yard, the ferns
are unfurling their fists. i wonder what it is
that they reach for. i should probably open
my hands too. catch something. not a star,
maybe just a petal from the peach tree who might,
if the world is real enough this year, bear fruit. 
 

tree funeral(s)

there were vultures playing video games
in the fields. the morning dew soaked
my feet & i got to school without a face.
i had slathered myself in vanishing cream 
in an attempt at gender sleeping.
out the classroom window they 
put caution tape around the hips of one
of the trees who knew my name. they started
with the arms. i had seen this before or maybe not
i am never sure what was a memory
& what was a fire escape. all day i heard saws.
limb by limb they took the tree apart.
she talked the whole way through it.
i felt useless. how did she come to be so calm
while coming undone? i was almost envious.
i keep falling apar. a collar bone. a hammer.
all the pictures on my bedroom wall falling down
like hail storm or remote controls. 
by the time the school day was over the work
was done. the tree lay in clean-cut logs
in the fields between my house
& the school building. the tree was still talking
somehow even though it was a funeral
& even though my face was coming back
in patches. greasy hair in the cool october wind. 
i brough the tree dandelion leaves & a snipping
of my hair. the tree said, "it is not as bad
as you think it will be." i did not believe her.
now, i am less certain about what she meant.
surely she did not mean to tell me that
it is not that bad when men come & tear you
limb from limb for no reason known to you
or the soil. maybe she meant the whole thing.
the rings & the moons & the vultures still
filling their throats with internet noise. 
i wanted to never go back to school. i kept
asking each tree i knew, "are they coming?"
the trees would not respond as trees do not
usually respond. they mull things over.
the leaves fell. soon, the earth was bare. 

propagation 

sometimes i cut off a hand 
& grow it like a spider plant child.
there you go little hunger. paint
a wall of the house. punch a hole
in the old moon to let 
the snakes out. when my lover
was courting me, he would cut off
one of his fingers at a time. let them
sprout roots & then gift them to me 
for my windowsill. i never remembered
to water them & so they died 
one by one. the ants came like
infinite rosaries to underworld 
each of the limbs. i was not made 
to care for vegetation but i know
i need to learn. everything worthwhile 
is seed started. knees tucked into chest. i wait
for water. i wait for you by the door. 
i still feel guilty about all the arms i've
wasted on my own running.
nothing ever returns the same. 
a ferris wheel in the refrigerator 
turns, empty & waiting for tarantulas.
once i fell from a ladder. i was a girl.
i crashed on the living room floor
& came apart into thousands of genders.
i am now just what was left after
chasing the sun. i am not interested 
in living intact. instead, i am looking 
for pots in the parking lot. i am 
watering my eyes. your dried thumb,
the abandoned carrot. in the apartment
without walls, i planted a potato
not knowing it would rot beneath 
the soil. what a spleen. what a liver.
leaves reaching up for dusty handfuls of light. 

recruitment 

a big solider comes with
a money face into the television.
i sometimes wake up in camouflage
& not in the lesbian way.
there is an ad on my youtube 
brain empty machine that asks,
"do you want to have purpose?"
it is followed by a clean missile 
cutting through the dark. this country
is a wound. it always asks for more.
but the thing about a nation
is that it cannot receive. not like
a mouth. not like a hole. instead,
this country works like a boiler room. 
blood in the stomach. the sky goes 
rust thumb red. i touch the ad by accident
& my life is a pen clicked 
in an empty room. on my way home 
from a tree, i saw military vehicles 
stuck in traffic. they were mean & green.
one of them as a tank. there is the way
over there & the war here & the war
between flesh & soldier. i dated 
a girl once who was in the marines.
she told me she never wanted 
to talk about it but once 
she got drunk & told me they took
an x-ray of her lungs. inside were
helicopters. inside were guns, loaded.
that details was important. if the guns
were empty they would have let her stay.
instead she went home. stood on 
the back porch & smoked until
she couldn't feel her throat.
take every uniform i find into the trees.
the trees say, "that is not a god."
i ask, "can you take it back?" 
they explain, "no, that is not a god."
i try to say, "i know it is not"
but they do not believe me. it is probably best
that they do not believe me. 
i hang the camo in the branches.
i expect skeletons when i return. instead,
there is nothing but hair. 

sweet feed

i want to be a baby girl
in the window kind of way.
the honey of a ghost train
through the milk-white woods.
god if we could be the sweet
peach soft of a new stomach.
let me be pussy willow until we are
nothing but cattail burst & blush.
round as we are melon. stars 
climbing down their ladders
to paint our eyelashes. i want
my mouth to only hold plums.
even their pits giving in to my marshmallow. 
the blossoms are brief & real.
we smell like the pink beneath fingernails.
headlights turn into fresh moons.
a tongue full of brown sugar. 
tell me there is a tree with all our hair
growing from the top. i hide behind
the big drum. pound the door
to win another palm. there is nothing
that doesn't open for me. the fruit swell
eager to dissolve in me. blood 
like velvet. velvet like lamb's ear
or mullein. i leave the ground hungry
for my footfalls. all the corn,
every single color, knows my name. 

sugar country 

we all have latent patriotism.
i am always trying to recover 
from this place & then there is
some other glorious wound. 
i get defensive when i hear people
talk about limiting sugar. 
not in the diabetes way (i get that) but in the,
"i am holier than you because i only eat
the hair of gods" way. i do not believe
in sugar addiction. i will call it worship. 
my father & i parked in the blue jeep
beneath a willow tree on a saturday morning outside
the farmer's market. syrup sun beams. we had gone
to the candy stand. a pound of gummy eggs
& a pound of spearmint leaves. 
bubble gum cigars, banana & green flavored.
sometimes, when we were feeling divine,
we would eat our whole stash right there
& not tell mom. 
teeth ringing. organ bell brothers.
our ages collapsed & summer stretched 
all taffy in the morning bloom. 
sugar is my steering wheel when 
a thunderstorm starts asking 
if we are still here. if you dig deep enough
in the chicken yard 
you will find veins of sugar. the first girl
i loved fed me chocolate & peach rings.
we laid on her roof. the older i get the more
sugar i require. my aunt mary actullay had
diabetes but she still snuck all the candy she could.
more & more as she aged. 
licorice & mints & m&m cookies. 
once i bit a boy in the dark. his body tasted
like a statue of sugar. i wondered then too
if i tasted the same. nothing but glass blowers 
in a bright dark. i am trying to stop loving sugar
because i know it is a hole. i do not love
this country or how we suck the soil white. 
i try to think of cane. of fields. 
a spoon in a jar. in a bag. the sound of 
light snowfall. dissolved on the tongue.
i am ready to leave. there is sweetness 
other than sugar.