telephone wife

i pick up the phone to find you
where you live facelessly.
my love is porous. with you
i've found rooms in myself 
i didn't know i could hold.
one for ice cream parlor bowls
& one for broken wine glasses.
before our calls 
i imagine your voice thrumming 
through the cat's cradle 
of telephone lines that nests the sky.
we met by accident. 
me at a telephone booth in berlin.
lost & looking for any kind of mother.
the phone was worn smooth 
from so many hands. i said 
"hilf mir," in a hushed voice
as if the city might hear 
my dislocation. there you were
like a pair of moths. your voice
a silk noose around my wrist,
pulling me back to my front lawn
where a sprinkler chirped 
& a car horn sparkled.
your voice was all it took
to drive the plane 
through clouds. you told me a story
about your hands, how they once
turned into frogs & hibernated
at the bottom of a pond. 
we talked for years 
& when i asked you to marry me
i didn't say, "will you marry me."
i just put the phone to my face
& you said "yes." someday you will
be a body, i am sure of it.
you'll eat a doorframe
with your shoulders. we will
put on a radio & dance
like cake toppers. until then,
i pick up the phone & find you 
where you live facelessly.
your mouth of amythesyt 
& quartz. your sweet round voice.
your unknowable eyes 
like bullseyes. the phone booth
turns upside down. i sometimes
think in german despite 
only traveling for a few weeks.
i still haven't asked where
you're from but i picture 
a small town made of wheat fields.
a windmill at the center.
everyone's voices spilling into recievers
long into the night.

pluck

when i say "one at a time"
i'm talking about feathers
not eyebrows. there are so many birds
to un-bird & i don't have any time.
what is the point of waking up
when you still have all your hair intact?
i find it hard to make peace with
scrambled eggs. was i not the yellow?
i think a turkey would be a good mascot
for america but at least eagles
are able pluck-able. we all take turns
with the bird like a pinata,
each of us hoping to pull
the final feather. beneath
pink flesh screams like a pillow.
when we're done the bird will 
disappear from our minds
like the bowl of cotton balls.
i used to trade eyelashes for dimes
from a man who lived inside a tree trunk.
to uproot the whole fire,
you need a blessing from ground water. 
i point to my mouth & ask to be
fed the remnant. a personal 
garden is waiting inside my face.
swallowing the gate's key. i don't know
if i plan on growing back. invisible holes.
turkeys roam wild. catching song birds
in a net like tuna. in life 
you're either the feather collector
or the feathered & i am not yet sure
which one i am. maybe we're all both.
i cannot remember the color of hair
that used to bloom from my scalp.
now it's just down feathers. soft 
& white & easy to remove.
handful after handful. what to do
with the turkey feathers but
make a monument out of them.
a plaque reads "here is where we go
to remember our hands." i stole 
one feather & keep it in my closet.
when i open the door it dances.
dust on the floor. my eyebrows,
like cliffhangers. i lean so close
to the mirror it becomes a pond.
tell me when it's april again.
i need that certain light.

glass eye 

we took our empty faces 
to the basement. fill the universe 
with the kind of sight you want.
there are so many people walking around
with pebbles in their face. 
they can hear the metamorphosis 
but then they never notice the dinner bells
as they chirp across electric wires.
tell me, what are you hungry for?
i want to feed the night sky marbles.
lie to the stars, saying
"these are my many eyes."
gobbling them. visions of fire 
& shape. iciles becoming teeth.
the family jewels are a pair of eyes.
glasses for seeing the highway signs.
my exit is always just before
the glowing elbows of god.
i'd like to place my sight 
on a pillow & set it at the feet 
of a great chasm. don't tempt me again
with falling. my glass eyes tell me stories
of ripening clouds & plumetting pianos.
we once found a trumpet in the closet.
i stuck my hand into the bell
just to find a little mouse without eyes.
he covered his face & we gave him
blueberry to see out of. 
i used to have a neighbor 
who didn't believe in glass.
he grew cherry tomatos on his porch.
said they were the only real way to see.
living through the rot just to replace them.
he held out a handful & ask if i wanted to try.
i ran away. comforted by
the smoothness of glass. the angles 
rolling glass with their firey hands.
i look at the planets with my own
little skulled moons. still,
i wonder what my neighbor saw.
some nights i caught a glimpse of him
standing on his back porch
& grinning at the tundra.

horse sleep

i learned how to sleep standing up
because someone had to watch
the front lawn for lions.
in the living room, the sheep had dreams
of us becoming wealthy off their wool.
they kept department store catalogs
& circled every gadget they wanted:
air fryers & freeze dryers &
a singing washing machine.
if i'm being honest with you 
i wanted those trinkets too.
wanted sliver & glossy apparatus
to make a home for us. 
i taught myself by watching horses.
walked out to the farmers 
& observed their tall slumber.
my knees became bottlecaps. my arms,
pinwheel blades. how different a machine
the body is when perpendicular.
really though, i want to be
a flying carpet. i want to live
horizontally the way the sun 
buds like a new tooth. 
tonight, wool fills every closet of our house.
the sheep went to school 
with lunch boxes of feed.
they came home & slept like buttons.
a horse is always a father unless
it is being led to water,
then it is a son. i was always
a son. holding my breath,
i'm waiting for sleep to make
a statue of me. blinking my eyes
i catch one lion & then two.
the world is full of lions.
or else maybe they were just
the shadows of pickup trucks.
it is always better 
not to chance it.

monster elegy 

all the doors in our house 
cracked open like eggs.
mice from the fields 
arrived to the basement
with handfuls of salt. 
what do you gift a monster
as it becomes nothing more
than shadow? their deaths
are not like ours. or, maybe,
i presume too much about souls.
the monster used to wake me up
by dropping bells on my chest.
making my phone ring 
over & over. would write
"emergency" on the fogged glas
of the bathroom mirrors. 
i learned to shower with
the curtain open. a monster
is eager to be a metaphor
but i wouldn't allow mine.
my illnesses were balls
of yarn & barbed candles.
the monster was the monster
& nothing more. i never saw him 
but then again neither did anyone else.
my secret is 
i was feeding him. brought turkey bones
& canned peas & notebook pages.
he swallowed them all.
reached claws under
every doorway in an attempt
to graze my ankles. the monster
loved me like pollen loves bee legs.
who else here was going
to feed his fear organs?
& then i loved him.
he kept me searching every corner.
kept me alive with worry. 
gave the windows reason to wilt.
once, i could swear he held me 
in the dark of night.
outside it was snowing 
in clumps of nowhere.
i blinked. felt his arms.
became a stone & went back to sleep.
now he is gone. crows come 
to the porch, each leaving
one ear of corn. stray cats form a circle
& walk fifty-two times around the house
until his spirit is snuffed out.
the basement won't hold a single shadow now.
the monster is gone. the mice 
take his bones with him
& leave me with only 
a single jagged tooth.

ideation 

on the night the sea urchins came
i was feeling like a helmet of mice.
there were potential ladders 
all over my body & the rain came 
through the walls like fingers through sand.
they crowded the windows & the door--
purple & prickled & smelling 
of the fresh sea. no one knows my terrors
like i do. there is a pocket knife
who floats in the closet. i once tried
to throw my heart off a roof but
it returned, like everything does
as a sea urchin. there was nothing to do 
but to tend them. i filled the tub
with salt water & let them all congregate.
they sang with voices made of thread.
hymns from beneath the waves. 
i moved them around to make room.
laid down with them & imagined my body
equally round & sharp. they promised
not to be a burden which is
what all parts of my body have promised
& lied to me about. the ocean 
drifted in & out of sleep. 
called me a "daughter" instead of
a "son" & i told her it no longer mattered.
i was going to be made of ice soon anyway.
how do you teach yourself 
to want your legs? i ask the urchins
who convene & agree wanting 
is a process, not a bolt of lightning. 
still, i want to be struck 
so loudly i singe. gleeful & burning.
a fire current. a future palm's worth 
of ash. the urchins tucked me into bed
before departing. i asked when they
could come back but they were
already gone--their ears like buoys.
a wave swallows me & i wake up 
in the bathtub of salt water
sobbing like a glass bottle.

silo

for winter, i stored my sadness 
along with the animal feed. 
brought it kernel by kernel
to the silo which grew,
pill-like, in the yard.
the animals by now were all ghosts.
cows laying on their sides 
beneath the willow tree 
like children hiding under
a mother's skirt. they told me
i should prepare for snow
but instead i savored each 
knuckle-worth of distress that budded in me.
sorrow can become a hobby
if you are living on the right street
& there aren't enough headlights
to harvest. living alone,
i ate only dragonflies & centipedes.
opened my mouth & closed my eyes.
thought of saint john the baptist 
devouring crickets in his loneliness.
i would never go hungry, i told myself.
stared up at the silo 
as it became more & more obelisk.
the animals took their skeletons
underground by november 
& it was just me. walking at night,
i counted sidewalk squares
& talked to fallen leaves.
you can use your melancholy 
as a fire or a hearth. the difference is
a fire asks for more & more of you.
i made a fire in every room.
the silo wept. full of weighty future.
tongue turning over like a flag poll.
filled to the brim. 
you can stuff every corner with grain 
& still feel a hole where the winter
with pull you. the silo 
sang to herself or maybe to me.
it was only october, i told myself.
but the animals were dirt dwelling
& it was just me & 
each & every kernel. 

my new york city boyfriend

has a metro pass but teaches me
how to jump the turnstyles.
makes me feel like a backpack
slung over his one shoulder.
there are skyscrapers in his closet
& he tells me we can take it slow.
in his mind, "slow" means
we will get married by midnight
& in the cool morning we will be
nothing but a noted subway stop.
car horns live in his eyes.
he holds my hand & walks 
like a metronome. wind tunnel buildings.
pigeons roosting on his shoulders.
he feeds stray poets & birds.
plants a tree in his living room 
to "reconnect with nature."
on a street corner he confesses
"there is a bookshop in your teeth."
i turn a new page. on the train
we do not sit side by side but rather
across from each other. he says
he's sketching a museum of me
in his head. i have always wanted
to appear how i do with him, as if my life
is both effortless & haphazard.
the grime of the subway station
asks too many questions like
"what does it mean to be temporary?"
& "how long should you pause?"
he gives me a stoplight necklace.
red red red. i struggle with the desire
to stand still in every rush of legs.
in the village, we are truly lovers.
i kiss him like catastrophe
& he drinks an espresso 
in one gulp. walks ahead of me.
looses a wallet & says
"oh well." the moon doesn't arrive
like my lunar phases app
said it should. he says,
"don't worry i'm the moon now."
neither of us glow. his windows
have no blinds so we become
moving portraits for whatever finds us.
as i knew it would, morning comes
& his apartment is another apartment.
mine is a box on the street corner.
i have learned so well how to be 
ready to go. find a skyscraper 
in my pocket. this is how i know
he still thinks of me.

cornfield graveyard

i want to be weathered 
like crooked familial teeth. 
crops stretching their arms. 
roots weaving with bone. 
we park on the side of spilled road.
winding turn after winding turn.
a school house with empty-eye windows
& a limestone kiln's keyhole 
in the knee of the mountain.
we count the grave stones to twenty.
some lean on each other's shoulders.
others are the size of shoes.
weeds laugh between--dandelions 
& ragged prickled hands. soon autumn 
will take all the field has made.
soy beans & wheat & corn. 
this corn is feed corn, meant
for the cows who, a hill away,
lay down beneath an ancient tree.
like me & you, they discuss 
the fate of their milk & bones. 
if i had to be buried, i would prefer
to think of my stone old & smoothed as these. 
a single bowded planet. 
breeze makes waves across sweet stalks. 
we get back in the car. 
i drive & find walls everywhere.
the stacked stone walls 
of the small family graveyards that dot 
these pennsylvania hills
in my hometown. i tell you,
"let's make our own"
as if the dead could build
their own playgrounds as if 
as ghosts who might run our fingers
across headstones
to make them featureless.

in the absence of queen bees 

we bejeweled our eyes & worshipped them. 
attic dust floating across 
afternoon light. i was just 
a honey worker. bringing whatever 
sweet language i could find. 
gold in my teeth. promises to breathern.
"we will get through this." my optimism
like a flute in the dark. listening
to my brothers as they arrived as 
dead batteries. as the comb turned
grey with worry & age. my own machine-wings
becoming stained glass windows 
through which little people came
to peer through. everyone is a church.
has the possibility to contain worship.
this can be terrible or it can be
a joy. my congregation did not remember
how to sing. the other bugs 
came to watch us. we tried to crown
a cicada but she could not learn
to bask in honey. ants came
as they always to do a carcass.
i could no longer even remember
the queen's face, only that it glinted
like a belt buckle as she closed her eyes
& spoke with god to request 
every single one of us. in my desperation
i shook a sibling awake. i said
"i could do it. i could be queen."
he laughed sadly & told me 
what i already knew. it was too late
for queens. we were orphaned 
in the shell of our home. 
he said, "would you like 
to go drink night flowers with me?"
i said, "of course."
so we did. in the glow of the moon
we drink lillies. let pollen cling
to our thighs. huddled 
in the great shadow. hip to hip.
we saw the hive from a distance.
little cathedral crumpling in.
the leaves yellowing in the oak tree
where we used to flock.