last year of sunflowers

we wasted the yellow
tossing it up in the air
like an infant. instead,
we could have held more
beam & glisten. i bought you 
everything our land could hold.
a tree of pearls. silk worms
for mending ever scism 
in our post-helicopter skin.
taking the fine china
out of cabinet for
a wedding attended only
by ghosts. we should have
at the very least, washed out faces
in the glow. all your freckles
turned to mouse feet.
there was one on every block
that year. sunflowers laughing,
throwing their heads back.
all sunflowers 
are boys. did you know that?
i didn't until it was too late.
here i was saying 
"she is dead she is dead she is."
once one said to me,
"you would make a wonderful 
monument." i nodded.
i would. i consider it sometimes
when you leave your socks out
like unskilled coin purses.
i had a jar left. just a smear.
the yellow humming 
with memories of opening 
in april. i make a fist 
& let it relax. extend fingers wide.
hold a snake skull. eat
a golden apple where once
used to live our coupling.
i mistake insects for seeds.
carried a lady bug
all the way to the bowl of soil.
pressed her into the dirt,
dreaming she could become
another flower. perfect
as i used to see your lips.
instead, i watch 
as she crawls free.

bootleg noise

i was your radium-faced lover.
god licked his brush
to make me glow. then, inside my body 
he left a cannibal capsule.
i devour my own time 
without a fork & knife.
the sharks fury at the shoreline.
if only if only. breaking a window
with a brick & yelling
"please be quiet!" the window
is my face. my face is 
a newly painted ceiling. 
hailing a taxi on a suburan street
free of taxis. in this heaven
no one drives. only the station wagon
that collides with a family tree.
drunk of dead apples. i've been
faking it for as long as i can remember.
tape recorder. organ-player 
in the basement. a video camera lives
on all fours just inside the closet.
keeping a diary just to watch 
as the diary sprouts insect legs
& refuses all sense. i had a type writer
i would use to aide in my own
unraveling. typing "please" 
until there was no more ink.
a record player in the living room
singing with the urgency 
of an ambulance. i sometimes
give up on sound entirely. 
wonder what i would have to do
to empty myself of its nails.
how it burrows in every ache 
my body has to offer.
sleeping off the tundra
just to find even my blessings
beneath the water. i ask 
a friendly ghost
to turn the record over. 
alas the other side is worse
as it usually goes. 
i fill my mouth with pennies
& walk as far away from 
the gramophone
as i possibly can. 

record store date

neither of us had a player
or a needle to spare.
his stomach, full of flat hands
& mine with grubs.
it rained often that spring 
& i made my legs as bare
as possible. shaving them 
in the gummy bathtub.
Pink girl-razor smell.
i looked for nirvana because
they seemed old enough
to have records. stared curiously 
at the schemes of symbols
album art yields: gritty space ships,
dancing bears, & close-ups
of beautiful girls. i collected them
for future references, memorizing
band names. repeating, pink floyd 
& the doors & the misfits
like an incantation. i followed him
as he lifted each disk.
held them up as if 
they were old friends.
why did i believe him? to be fifteen
is to trust everyone's hands too much
& your own not at all. sometimes
at restaurants he would hand feed me.
stroke me head. i wanted to be glass.
i wanted to be a bell. kissing me 
every few feet. sublime playing
on the store's speakers. 
then, a beaded door
at the back of the shop
with a sign that said 18+.
he lied, saying he'd gone back there
many times. i nodded, 
like he'd said something sacred.
cassettes lay in lines
forming a dark grin. i thought,
don't look at us. outside
it poured. we circled the store again.
no where else to take
my need to be filled
which is of course also
a need to emptied. he took my wrist
& said, "let me tell you
let me tell you" & he thronged
my face with everything 
i already knew. 

when the giants came

i was wearing a steel hat
& silk gloves. "prepared for anything,"
i said. tuesday wouldn't come
& thus neither could the end.
so, here i am,
kissing another boy 
on a match head. that is what
it feels like to live right now.
sometimes the news arrives
simply as a maroon trumpet.
geese migrate from living room
to living room. i feed them 
handfuls of pearls.
nothing is beautiful anymore 
because i say so. that is except
for you my love who has been sleeping
so long you're stone. i refuse
to move or else i will never see
your eye lids again.
my body is a tapestry of hideaways.
i carved a hole in an apple
& watched the earth shake.
giants, more every single day.
their faces like fists.
books leap from shelves.
slumbering in the middle 
of the streets. in a body that big
there's no where around here
to settle. i want to invite them in
& destroy all the smallness
i've built. we baracade the door
even though the giants could just
snap it open. ritual is often
what we do to immitate safety.
lighting candles as if 
a fire could not rise
to inhale us all. i name the giants 
after past mountains long converted
to women. i have a tendancy towards
loving that which can kill me.
carving my ribs into paring knives
& my teeth into pills. 
i can't help it. this is 
my catastrophic alchemy.
the giants came eager & ready. 
this is more than i can say for us.
maybe they know 
what to do with my bones.

goldilocks

in my gender i am one of three bears.
i cull the forest for freeways.
hitchhike like only a devil can.
when i was small i snuck away often
in search of something beauitful
to devour me. i cut off my hair
in slices. fed each to a ghost
who lived in a rotted tree.
to invite yourself in to every vacancy 
is to decide there is no such thing
as righteous empty. the nothing
belong in the hands of angels
who have more experience with hollow.
instead, young & fearless,
i drank from fountains of mud.
slept in the beds of monsters
only to find mirrors above 
my slumber. there i was full of teeth
staring right up. the animals
emerging in me. my pelt hung 
on the bedframe. pink & un-skinned.
i could have been demolished.
collected all three of my tears
from the hard wood floor. 
in another room a mother is always
readying her rope. a father is 
forgetting the important 
of his ring of keys. a baby is
trimming the edges off gender.
rolling a ball through the thick woods.
just to have it returned
by the bear versions of ourselves.
of foraged my way through autumn.
light under my fingernails.
shaved my head until 
my hair grew back brown.

in the jungle of fathers

a telephone is a machete.
all plants spit bottle caps 
instead of seeds. i am just
a daughter-son. to be a child
is to always be searching
for a talisman to age you.
or, at least, this is how i lived.
cutting down brush asking
"hello?" as if a father might
empty himself at any moment.
i am in his wallet. i am 
a wooden bicycle in his garage.
the car stares with gem-cut eyes.
kneeling in rich soil
to look for a purity ring.
he checks my glass self.
breaths to fog the surface.
we would eat & talk as if
he wasn't the whole fucking forest.
forks in tree necks. a paradise bird
who says, "he's home,
he's home." when will i get to be
a commander? which is to say
when will i get to be my father?
this is not something 
i actually desire but i want
to step through it like a membrane.
eating the depth's overripe fruit.
sick on orange. he has every antidote.
syrup on my hands. i am 
an evidence machine. here i was
here i was here i was.
he tells the canopy he is busy.
puts his hand on my back,
plucks out a single vertabrae 
from my spine to use 
as a nut. says, "you asked
for this body, did you not?"

metal salad

we spooned the factory.
said "goodnight" to our old bodies.
bionic tongue & a firework 
bursting in the fridge.
all i wanted when i was fourteen
was to make monuments 
to my visible bones. let robots 
skii across every vertabrae.
red button on my neck blinking
"catastrophe." he kissed it
like a mole. i sit 
tearing a piece of foil off
& wadding it up in my mouth.
i'd chew like this, looking
for flower meat or other 
sustenance. a bouquet of forks.
swallowing a knife whole.
my boyfriend watched me 
like a doctor. i filled my skull
with tarantulas. they programed
a video game where balloons 
hit the ceiling & you have to
try to rescue them. a pixel 
replaces the snow flake 
& our hunger is never the same.
i prefer copper but will settle
for nickle if i must. 
snacking on coins by a fountain.
long ago, i took to becoming
my own pool for wishing. 
i drop sacrifices into my heart
to watch the ripples. surfaces
bleed without warning. now there is
a hammer head on the kitchen table.
everything can be a murder weapon.
metal alphabets are the only way
i can even say, "i need you"
or "i love you." my love is
steel-toed & walks unsturdy. 
we split the gold ring for lunch.
a portal forever waxing in my chest.

gummy shark

water is a sugar spirit.
we used to eat handfuls 
of monsters from a sweating sunset.
playing the horizon lines
like lute strings. a plastic bag
houses all my remaining needs:
to devour every wound, to swim
in water clear as glass,
to feel every circle ever turned.
in the sky above birds
for a ring to cut a hole in cloud.
water pours to start the next ocean.
in the bath tub as children
our bodies were just vessels 
for the final time. in a photograph
a shark lurks beneath the soapy water.
a reminder of how every water
is deeper than it appears.
stepping into a puddle & falling
through the city only to emerge
in a bed room for ghosts.
the blue of golf courses
is supernatural by which i mean
it carries worlds in its mouth.
really, we must eat. 
trac each other's earlobs 
like guard rails. pour sharks out
on the sidewalk & wait for them
to adapt. i grew a gill once
from so many years of living underwater.
took a thumb's worth of foundation
to hide the crease along my neck.
i chew my life's white belly.
feel fins chime in my teeth.

re-worlding

i sowed a new planet
in the dust of our lake.
body of water.
were you also dried 
by the sun's new dress?
it looks cheap on her.
full of all the fishes who tried 
& failed at having legs.
breathing like skyscrapers.
i look down & see a bustle dying out. 
that summer i saved all my shed skin
for a future form.
believed too aredently
in rebirth. made preparations.
backpacks of lotion. oranges in a bowl.
tubs & tubs of water. the new planet
will be inverted. trees grow downward.
rain leaps upward into clouds.
mothers stand at the edge of the yard
& dream of fences. how far
can you throw a rock?
i consider breaking a neighbor's window 
to warn her i'm about to 
trade the moon for a platter
of steamed shellfish. 
palm of melted butter. i give you
a knife & explain where 
to dig the well. through the basement 
underneath the washing machine
that hasn't spit in weeks.
everything is breaking
& needs to be replaced. 
it is very human of me 
to hold hands with trees 
& conspire against their dirt.
i whisper, "we could go 
anywhere." the tree sighs
& waits for me to leave
so she can braid her hair. 

porch pirate

to unwrap the old wishing well.
one day a box of cue tips, another
myriads of chocolate oranges.
ripples across my old lover's face. 
how she lived on coins alone.
i keep inventory & make unkeepable promises
of repayment. there's always
the next life where i have decided
i will be a land lord (an amicable one).
seasons sift beneath me
like projections. always 
giving summer away. i used to fill
shopping carts with only bread
just to leave them. i called them
"ration ships." my daughter 
eats like a song bird a stolen granola bar.
there are people out there who order
in bulk. masses & masses of food. 
i wonder what it's like to move forward
with such certianty. i see a door,
any door, & i think "please stay closed."
children run up & down the sidewalk
collecting leaves. like them
i am in search for the most gorgeous one.
take a desire inventory:
a microwave large enough
to fit a skull, a doll house 
my daughter can fit inside, & maybe 
another shipment of gummy chicken feet.
i'm always strolling like the air
is mine. keep a pocket knife 
for a wife. a box must be 
discarded immediately. molted,
is how i think of them. 
opening each in the backseat 
while i park at the drug store.
packing peanuts swarm. bubble wrap.
righteous fury at nonesense
delivered from angels. i steal
a shopping cart & park it underneath 
the bridge for someone else to find.
drive home as if i am not
a disease. passing houses 
with their porch lights on.
i am only that colleague of shadows.