long story

"it is a long story"
i said as a catapult sang 
herself toward ambrosia.
the war was luckily all wooden 
this time & so we put in headphones 
& ambled away to the basement. 
we he been sitting in front 
of the portal & talking 
nonsense when you asked me
where i stole my eyes from.
you replied, "please tell me,
i need to know. i don't care
how long a story." we both
had lion's tails we bartered for.
i lay mine across my lap 
& contemplated your attention span.
outside, birds were huddling
in fear. a grey cloud fathered
the fields, meaning he pummled them.
i agreed & began. the story
had whimpers & muck.
the story pulled us through
croquet arches. i talked so long
i passed the eyes & moved on
to the origins of my heart.
how at the dawn of time 
a mistress pluck it from
a fallen apricot tree. wrapped it
in plastic & shipped it off
to the future. there yours was too.
an orphaned plum. too ripe
for its own good. how do any of us
endure these durations. 
my story skipped like 
pinewheels in too much wind.
the portal asked, "why do you say
so much?" the story crumbled
& released us. i glared 
at the portal. who asked you,
i thought. portal are always
trying to coax you away from your bliss.
i took out an ear bud. war still
knocking around. you said,
"could i tell you a long story?"
i said, "only if you tell it
twice. once longer than the first."
the windows scabbed over.
in the dark, your voice
was the only moon. both my eyes
trembling like wet river rocks.

famine

in the morning all milk turned to air.
pale white smudges where god
pried his fingers away
from the glass earth.
i used to sit at the kitchen table 
as a round little human 
swallowing roaming calcium.
the cows grew horns. bulls bleed milk
from their mouths. i asked 
my gender what kind of nutrients
it would provide us for these times.
raining lemonade. afterward 
the street smelling of constriction.
we used to drink the cream
from the lid. used to soak out feet
in white. took spoons from 
an angel's plate to eat
vanilla ice cream in front 
of a glowing television. the bees
search for words. i cut a hole 
in the ceiling & wait to be flooded
with grief. mothers turning into elm trees.
my sock puppet lover saying
"your love is only you looking back."
a boat to prepare. a life jacket
in the hall closet in front of
grandmother's furs. the animals,
drinking nothing but maple syrup 
from the throats of trees. their bodies
thinning into twigs. in the end,
aren't we all the fire's bildungsroman?
i'm asking the stars 
what is left to quell monsters.
the stars are packing their bags
& covering their faces
with their hands. 

mountain gardening

i shed a bone last night
& carried it into the woods.
it was not yet white--
still sinewed & greyish.
if i'm being honest, at first,
i tried to put it back.
unsure of where it fit,
i pleaded with the fragment.
asked to stay whole
which is, i am well aware,
a futile effort. but a bone
is a great opportunity 
for a mountain garden.
so, i carried it into 
crowds trees. orange & red leaves
making a damp fire all around me.
a mountain garden is the deepest
kind of planting. digging 
with bare hands into the earth
of the mountain. asking to hide
a secret between her shoulder blades
just to watch it grow.
once, i buried a ring like this.
the ring had a string to 
an old lover. the lover now travel
to the mountain, following
the rings blossoming impulse.
i asked the bone to become
a well or at least a new ridge.
covered it with moss & gravel.
listened as the trees sighed
in gratitude. there is no better way
to dismantle one's self
but to make a garden. i am planning
what each shard will become.
i want to instigate a stream.
cultivate new ruined houses.
rubble for dusk light 
to play in. the bone trembled
in the dirt. i still feel it
from where i lay in bed alone.
above me, a neighbor moves his dresser
back & forth as if she is a wife.
across the street a woman smokes 
endlessly on her porch. 
she's missing four teeth. 
i hope she has a mountain garden too. 

night racing

i listen as they trample 
with dinner knives through 
a field of antique stars.
their headlights, hungry 
dueling brothers. humans 
are always in need of a race.
who will defeat all distances?
the road, a dark ribbon
around the neck of ghost.
i want to know how far they go
& how they choose which streets
to tear into. if they rush
with their windows open
or down. does the music they play
invent catacombs in their skulls
or do they sing to forget bone entirely?
memento mori is what engines say. 
gripping the gear shift:
the wooden spoon their mothers use
to stir a metal-belly. dinner
was or is autumnal. 
everything now orange.
passing children as they
pick the season's last strange
wild flowers: pink & lilac faces.
from the racers' windows, a pasteling occurs.
every corner houses their mothers. every porch,
their father's cigarette smoke. how & when
do they decide to slow? when they leave
their machines are they rid 
of some urge or are they 
even more haunted?
do they always want more? 

universe poem

in a blender, a star becomes
a pale of gold. on a lunar beach
there are space sea gulls feeding
on lollipops that escaped orbit.
often, i'll find tiny universes
where i don't expect. opened my pocket
& grazed the edge of a black hole.
opened my closet to find nothing
but cosmos, thick & blue.
there are too many stop lights 
& not enough moons. a car parks
on my street nearly every morning
& beeps the horn loud & long.
they are taking someone each time
to another sun. i wish when 
i looked up at the night sky
stars would crawl like aphids.
a great flower blooms & universe bees
come to visit as a pilgrimage.
i, on the other hand, have never even
left the atmosphere. there are billionaires
with space suites who have never heard
what the black of space will say 
if you cup a hand around your ear.
telescopes are spiritual instruments.
staring the universe in her wild face.
freckled with space junk. 
i walk down a side street at night
feel a universe in the bushes 
& another in the street lamp.
quicken my pace. i don't have time
for how large everything is.
i prefer inner-tubes & lakes.
a park with a looping trail
exactly one mile long. the universe
winks with blue headlights. 
i trip on my own electric
before the car honks. 
it is morning. 

rind

scrape pink from my carapace
& give the clothesline my secrets.
i stuff all my worries into one sock
& hurl it off the side of the row boat.
by the ocean, a giant squid's carcass
is making landfall. soon, the humans
will believe in monsters.
eyes like dinner bells. too late
for a new tire. standing on 
the side of the highway & waiting 
for a father or for god. i invent
disasters for entertainment or survival.
took a pocket knife to my stockings
so i could breathe. there is no outside
vs. inside. there's only fruit
& rind. if you eat the rind
you eat the elsewhere. i have a right
to know where my shoes go
when i sleep. little journey 
to the basketball court to play 
with the others. i want to sleep.
i want to use the moon as a record
& see what songs she's hiding.
if i am seasonal, please divide me.
don't wipe your faces or wrists.
become nector goddesses.
wear bees for rings. what does it mean
to be whole? with a rind touched?
i don't know what i would do 
with all that thick skin.
i might be lucky then to be 
a pinwheel of bruises. each 
sweeter than the last. 

washing rice & hanging it out to dry

we are called to eat our elephants 
one grain at a time. but, i am too busy 
with the sink & the blue sound of soap.
i watch you as you swish the rice.
each fleck of bone. i imagine rice growing
from graveyards & church courtyards.
plucked one fragment at a time.
this is how i find myself living,
morsel to morsel. on my thumb i sketch
a sunset & press it into a lined-page.
i want someone to scrub me clean.
your knuckles, like bouys. my family is
driving to the ocean as we speak
with a trunk full of rice. our daily 
pilgrimages. how we choose to relate
to salt water. gulls sifting the rice
from a dark storm cloud. diving 
into the water to wash each grain.
this is what each of us must do.
invent polish for the rest of our lives.
who doesn't want to come apart like rice?
i opt for stickiness. to be served 
like a little round mountain in a tiny bowl. 
this time, let my murk be released 
by nothing but water. pristine 
from every possible edge. 
you pick up a handful & tell me
"look-- it is almost ready." before you
i never washed rice. nearly transculenct,
the grains grin. almost teeth, but not quite.
something further than teeth.
wing buds. tear ducts. the future eyes 
of storms. ready for the pot & wooden spoon. 

beard of bees

trust begins with the chin.
when i first came out as a man
someone told me, "you're going
to have to shave all the time."
the bees make a hive
in my gender. omens of future candles.
arriving on the oldest air.
the bees have lantern 
in their yellow & brass trinkets
dangling in their thoughts.
whose bell is ringing?
i treat razors like gardening tools.
a weed opens from my neck.
i want to be pollenated.
to bear apples & plums.
feel seeds heavy with future.
the bees know all there is to know
about skin. each lands & nestles
in my warmth. rows upon rows 
of visitors. what is the distance
between bee body & my flesh?
whatever it is, it lessens.
soon they are all thrumming.
my face, the face of a drum.
bees talking about bloom & butter
& believing in ghosts.
bees on  my top lip. their fur
& their sticky legs. closing my eyes
i dream i am made of nothing
but bees. soon the hive will
call me to return. i will be
thousands of fragments
each searching for their own
moles of sweetness.
but, for now i am just
a boy inside a gender
inside a flock of bees.
one whispers a secret
into my ear. no, i can't 
tell you the secret.
if i did, the bee would return
disgruntled about our broken trust.
instead i will tell you
before he departed he said,
"you can always come home
to the hive." i nodded
even though i'm not sure how. 
pat my face dry. swish 
a razor under warm water.
all the tiny hairs in the sink.
the legs of bees.
pollen on the windowsill.

femme

like any good binary
i am my best in the dark.
sometimes a fishnet 
is all you need to be a real boy. 
often, in shadows, a bird
will briefly become a fish.
flash of scales. this is why 
all birds roost by the water.
like all binaries, i am 
sort of lying. did you know
the moon is just a reflection
of the soon on the infinite water?
lying again, or am i? i grew 
as a little boy. my face lived
on a penny until i turned it over
& became a monument. where 
do you salvage your other sides?
like a sock, my father curls up in the dark.
i peer in his bedroom door 
just in time to see him 
as an old woman knitting
endless scarves. what is the opposite
of an egg? i'm asking because
they are something else then in the cartoon.
their secret little lives as needles.
you found the light switch in my throat
& asked "what does this do?"
before, flicking it & watching me
turn into a hydrangea bush. 
i sigh, saying, "i wanted roses." 
what is more femme than 
a thorn? than a tangled mess of green?
i take you on a cobblestone road
towards an old barn where 
all the old genders go to graze.
i am the neither & the all & the always.
when i put on a wig, if bursts into 
chicken feathers. i want nothing
to do with hunger. instead i will be
hungry. if you put on what you need
like stockings it will have no choice.
opening my mouth i tell you "quick look!"
you catch a glimpse of my teeth
as blossom buds.

motorcycle hatchery

i was the reved engine of your expectations.
inside the cement shells of future gods,
the yolk is eggplant purple & iridescent.
along my street men become dragons
in their brief night rides. they are trying
to be born. not again but for a first time.
upset at every lack, i hurl eggs 
at the moon. luckily, none smash on her face.
sometimes i feel like my impulses are not me
but then, frightefully, i rememeber they are.
my brother once punched a hole 
in our dining room wall. i want to frame it
& call it "family portrait." you talk 
unkindlt about your tarantula, saying
"she's only a collection of electrical impulses."
how many motorcycles has she counted today?
has she considered what it's like
to be as fearful as a mammal? i can't cry at all
but i can swallow a drop of oil 
& wait for rainbow pools to come from my eyes.
we all have this desire to rip a hole
in the egg. for some it is an egg tooth
& other it is a motorcycle. helmets have been
growing on trees lately. you don't think of me
like i think of you. though, unfortunately,
this is a summary of being a species. 
i invent a machine that will always 
drive the distance. no longer will we sulk
like geese. i tried once to plant a peach tree.
pressed the pit into your chest while you slept.
instead a motocycle passed by the house
at that same minute & hour every night.
no peaches to be seen. i made a fist once
for so long that when i opened it 
there was a baby chick inside. 
what makes you soft? give me more of that.