dark room for pictures i didn't take

when i told you i would remember
the door opened like a cascade of nowhere.
into the fade of your face.
a humid tongue to stand on.
this is my ted talk on why we shouldn't
ever be in love. picking sick from
from the thumb trees of our town.
an abandoned factory spitting bolts 
into our open hands. i would have
accepted anything. the photographs then 
hanging like moons on their strings.
soldiers in their own right.
how sometimes an image can be 
sharp enough to extract your whole life.
the times my body was a projector sheet.
dipping me in the developer. your teeth
in a line across my chest. 
will i always be swallowed? did i allow
the mouth or did the mouth allow me?
drinking with our pinkies up.
the rusted & dead driveway batteries
we have to use to turn on brocade.
pictures of feather you took 
& took as they fell from a slit.
i asked for your help but you said
you were hungry. everyone is an artist
until the hollow becomes a partner.
i carried his bag of echoes
to the creek. a bullfrog ate a bird.
a snake formed an infinity symbol
as a joke. i emptied everything
he told me about my skin. 
but the world splashed back at me.
i lost my eyebrows to this.
the photos bathes bringing them
into a future of black & white.
this is not a picture of us. this is
only a picture of me.

@ the gym i lift halos

& get my skull crushed in the process.
heavy as a teaspoon of supernova dirt.
there are cycles that were never meant for me.
the way the sun leaves halos
in your eyes if you stare too long.
going outside to cut a body 
from terryclothe. jumping rope 
while the kick boxers pretend the punching bag
is their fathers or god (what's the difference).
they say exercize is a form
of stress release. i find my heart 
is a nest of finches. i collect strings
to help them build. as if my body could ever
be made into something less transparent.
i was cocky. i thought, "maybe angel."
i found a long mirror to ask my muscles
about their topiary. a breeze threats 
to pull leaves from the sockets.
the angels go into a bee hive to train.
for me i have a sweaty bench.
watch other men's hands gripped 
around the necks of barbells.
what are they lifting? i guess 
the better questions is what do they think
they are lifting? once on a bad day
i lifted my whole family all the way back
to grandfathers. no one noticed
so i gave up. more people should give up
more often. i reccomend once a week.
i stand in the middle of the halo
as if glows like no tomorrow.
there is no tomorrow at least not for
my strength. i flex as if 
a muscle could become a home.
i do not know how to be divine
but i do know there are 
figure skaters who help inspire
the shape. they are all evaporated.
tracing the circle with a finger
just to hear it sing. my skull
in stained glass pieces.
who needs a good body after all?
the halo can belong
to someone else.

dogwood blooms w/ dogs

i was the down boy & stay stay stay
in the sickly sweet april 
of your first hikes.
the mountain didn't know 
what to do with all the faces. 
tossing them from its branches 
like tissues or travelers.
picking dogs for you
from the green. giving away
you phone number to breeders.
everything is fucking
or at least yellow. crocuses 
with their throats full
of the young boy i could have been.
a boy & his dog a dog & his boy.
us, running on the railroad tracks
until they turn into ladders.
dreams of coal that once
pulled fire from the earth.
i am rescuing the dogs or else
they are not dogs at all but
flowers who learned to run.
rearing its ugly head,
a knot forms in the tree's factory.
how i stuffed my pockets.
smelled my fingers for pink.
found a few unopened buds
which remembered me of fawn.
worried if i held them too long
they'd burst free with all 
those hooves. but instead
we have dogs enough to survive.
dogs for sleeping & dogs
for confessions. i laugh 
like only a meadow really should.
let the tree deliver 
dog after dog. forgetting all memory
of blossoms. how an old lover once say
he could see a whole dogwood tree
at the back of my throat.
tails wagging & all. it is better left
between me & the animals 
of which i am certaintly one.
i hope to grow alive like this
in the next life. swelling sensation
& then the wet april-mouthed world
stirring me until i have legs.

goldfish tricks

long ago i taught my goldfish 
how to come when they're called.
the world is a water wake.
caskets of diamonds & 
an ocean as deep as a planet.
if given enough room
goldfish swell huge as koi.
i am thinking of how
every want i had once fit inside
bowls of water. look how huge they are now.
i ask for impossible justices
in the form of wings & fins.
goldfish pass over head 
like the sun's messengers.
light making each scale glow. 
organs like nestled kingdoms. 
i cut gills in my own throat
with a pocket knife. i am learning to
live on fish food & following 
a herd of goldfish. i ask them 
what they know about gold but
all they can say is, "we are
on our way." i am not on my way anywhere
& i am worried neither is anyone else.
however, i might be moving away.
drifting. a ghost ship populates
with skeletons. i swim deeper.
see where the water is swelling
in both directions. soon the sun
will be a bowl. tapping the glass
& saying, "come." the fish moving
like stained glass, coming to take
a bite from my fingers. i used to be
master & now i am hungry.
nothing the right command couldn't fix.
looking for a mirror to 
talk to myself. finding only 
more of my kind. goldfish & more goldfish.
a maze of bowls. the glass making
our eyes in to catacombs.
each day i wake up & ask 
for far too much. i should learn
i should learn something new 
& bright & wonderful. the water tells me
there are enough handfuls of gravel 
in the world to eat algae off of.
do i believe in feathers? in birds?
in gold at all?
 

petco snakes

take me to your capture
where you were born like ribbon.
i no longer wish to be
whatever kind of free
i am told this is. i want 
a terrarium like yours where 
the world arrives for me to swallow.
a frozen mouse unthawing
in the heat lap. tell me,
when you see my eyes 
do they look like marbles
or distant planets? you move
like a noose around the dead log.
hide your face in a plastic cave.
maybe i am romanticizing 
your containment. forgive me.
my mind is just spilling 
from every single sky.
i tie myself to radiators
to keep from becoming a roadkill.
then here you are
with your right angles
& a lid where you were once
lowered in. i am looking
for a handler who will be gentle 
& not afraid of me. we are not
all the different. i will admit
i so badly want to take you home
& let you loose in our house
just to discover where you would
hide yourself. would it be
the same place that i go? the corner
of the room where i can hear
cars spinning down the street
late into the darkness. 
but no i will leave you here
my brief scaled friend. 
someday, tell me what you dream of.
we can always trade. i can be 
the cord or life behind glass
& you can be the human 
without any levees. whose face
makes a moon in your glass.

clock tower in a jar

i like my time in the form of jelly beans.
i don't eat anything 
one at a time. 
let's take turns feeding the snakes.
they come to my bathtub where
i've been soaking a handful of tombstones.
walking down an alleyway at night
i used to fill my pockets
with the dusk's sharp orange.
cuts all over my hands.  
how do you learn to live
outside the memory of your main street?
i was only a girl & my body 
lost limbs here & there. all my teeth 
blew out of my head like dandelion tufts.
i tried to collect them
& stick each back in. of course
it was a mess. i sometimes open jam jars
just to find they are all
berries still & not boiled 
& spreadable at all. i like my time 
in ladels. poured down my throat.
i like my time taken back
when it suites me. the bar of soap
growing larger again. then, in the fridge,
the jar where the clock tower lives.
his chicken face & his mischeif.
i open him up just to remember 
what it felt like to live so full
of winter. how my bones were each 
balanced beams. the clock tower bites
so i close the lid before
he can get out. my town crawls
on all fours when the moon is not out.
takes the opportunity to bite 
each breath from my mouth.
an open window. a fear of heights.
the trees feasting on sunset.
shoeless in the portrait
of a window. i am not sure anymore 
what vessel to put this in.
i carve a raft just to burn it.
eat a pink jelly bean.
let the morning do its work.

tooth gay

a dentist lives in a tiny cage
in the corner of my bedroom
where he teaches me
about decay. i feed him 
newspaper & spearmint. there are 
metal devices for excavating 
all the gravel from between
canines. dogs are running 
back & forth across the moon again.
pillow pulled over my face.
i saw another many yesterday 
with his own teeth for earrings
& i wanted to sleep with him.
saying, "open up your mouth
i want to see craters."
comets are just the teeth of gods
or else something important
is falling apart & losing its pieces.
a metal knot once fell
out from beneath my car 
& i tossed it into the bushes.
the rocket ship i refuse to fire up.
i want perfection & i'm willing
to pull each tooth out of my skull.
i'm asking what it means 
to save the pieces of our bodies.
jar of teeth on the shelf. 
necklace of teeth. the dentist promises 
he'll chew his way out
if i don't release him. 
i laugh because i know
he won't actually do it. 
all talk & more talk. i want to know
if he has a lover but instead
i put at tarp over his container
so i can worry about that tomorrow.
what are you gleefully 
putting off? i find a mirror 
& decide which tooth i would like
to gift the man. ask it nicely
to become a beetle & crawl out
onto my palm. good tooth. good tooth.
it listens. i put it in 
a ring box. will you populate 
a skull with me? that's how
i'll ask. picture flowers bursting
from every corner of bone.
i want to be one of 
the worshippers of bone. 
to one day carry all my teeth in hand
as tokens for the afterlife.
i'll see the other many there.
he will also be ready.

the school of failed marine biologists 

tell me what you'd like to save 
when you grow up?
when i was small i said, 
"possibly whales."
my first choice was dinosaurs
but those were too far gone.
filled every open vessel with
salt water. stood on the ocean shore
& pretended to be a conductor
pulling waves in & out. 
jellyfish washed up like ancient hats.
then, i almost drowned in a river.
a shark came carrying a prophecy.
he said, "you are not & then
you are not again." i asked,
"i am not what?" i assumed he meant
i am not becoming what i thought i would.
amounting to something 
is very overrated. i used to think
i would ride a boat into 
the open water. talk to kelp forests.
mend the fins of dolphins.
discover the written languages
of octopi. as children we have such 
loftly ideas of what it means
to be an anything. i want to be
what i thought a marine biologist was.
endless conversations
with water mouthed animals.
no fear of drowning at all. 
a scuba dive into the lair 
of a giant squid. don't give me
science like data. i want mystery 
& air bubble rising to the surface.
under the waves 
the sun becomes a grandmother. 
sources of light. i want to be
a marine biologist still
but wanting means something different
each year i am alive. plunging.
a whale carcass feathering open.
how deep the world goes 
& how most of my day is 
an ode to sidewalks & streets. 
i can of course try again right now. 
i drive to the ocean
to issue an apology for not 
drowning. the water does not
remember as it can not possibly remember
everyone who thinks they can mother it.
how can you mother the mother?
the answer is. you cannot.
you can only listen & listen
until both your lips 
are the same. 

tape recorder 

the device was a snake machine
where the church women
gave my father his bread.
what we do to be remembered;
i will not be part of that. 
going out to dinner
to celebrate another year
with voices. i told the tape recorder
i was planning to overwrite
my life anyway & start
a new saved file anyway. on my back
i took voice notes about 
the texture of broken glass.
a handful of ice cubes
i carried to a chalice 
in the middle of a tongue.
the tape recorder arrives 
beneath almost every desk i sit at.
remove it & place it inside 
a conch shell. try hearing me now.
it could be a prank by angels
or, worse, a prank by god.
he has a bin of tapes he keeps
in a basket by his couch.
what must it be like to create something
& hear it talk. this is how i feel
about my poems sometimes.
look how it talks! another tape recorder
crawls with eight legs.
is technically a spider 
but is definitely listening.
if i sound paranoid i promise
i'm not. i'm just being aware
of my surroundings. at any time
there are at least three recordings
taking place. i don't need to be
a catelog but i do need
to be a parascope. the mountains
are full of tapes. all of them
unfilled yet. the taperecorder 
has an idea of what it's looking for.
i put my teeth inside a jar
& shake it. nothing at all
to listen to here. at least not
until my father comes back
for worshipping god.
he'll come around. he always does.

in the ghost car city

i am driving through 
a river of greying milk. 
the snow is not snow at all
but a colony of perfect spiders.
the park lots stretch far & wide
like pastures. i feed my car
handfuls of lockets.
she purs & whirls & sputters.
i met a demon underneath 
the bridge & he told me
if i grind my bones into dust
& feed the birds i will be
someday a god. i did as he said
over over again. the birds
feasted. take what you can get
or at least that's what
my father always said.
a neon sign says, "24/7"
& i say, "so am i."
a ghost car pulls up & honks 
asking for me to climb aboard.
i have something to live for
or at least that's what
i tell my bank account 
in the depth of night
when i check to make sure
i am still alive. a pipe breaks
& the basement is converted 
into an aquarium. my rent goes up
because now we get the pleasure
of looking at sharks. 
the ghost cars dance 
with one another. circles 
& the brightest headlights.
of course i want to be taken.
extracted from my life
like a blue potato. instead
the potential danger keeps me rooted.
i ask one car, "would you have my home
by midnight?" the car laughs
& the crows laugh & the city laughs.
there is no midnight.
not for us.