wax lips

talk to me like a leather saddle.
in the candy shop our mouths
were ripe as honeydew. you dripped
from your bowl of bruises 
& i smiled like only a false god can.
making a shrine for juju bees.
praying from their arrival. wads
of pink gum in our hair. i grew
to the size of a jaw breaker.
i broke a picture frame intended 
to house the whole world. a lollipop 
growing from what wa supposed to be
a tomato plant. i eat a balanced diet 
of red dyes. putting on my artifical hair
to go out in search of a nice man. 
find them knotted in their own cotton candy.
pink-haired, i found a forest of cubicles.
in each a vending machine promised
only peanut m&ms. a room of goats 
wearing wax lips. the mouth is
the most edible organ. i took yours
in mine. you took mine & ran away.
shared it with neighbors until 
the whole town had a tooth 
& a sweet cherry flavor. melting 
on the perfect sidewalk. i am learning
brevity in the form of candy watches.
biting time in the face. you telling me,
"i have no mouth beneath this one"
when i go to take off your wax lips.
"where is it?" i ask. you evaporate
under the pressure to be real.
i don't blame you, i would too.
there's always another body part though.
don't have a foot? here's an ear.
i keep a spare closet of pinky fingers.
we spread gummy spiders out on the table.
i say, "they look like they're moving."
you are not really there but you do say
"that's because they are." 

stray elevator 

does not go to heaven
despite what the sign says.
only one man returned from his trip
& he says the clouds are made 
of tiny glass shards. he says,
"i walked through a stain glass window."
the elevator stands resolute 
on a sidewalk corner.
i tell my friends via text
"there's another one this week."
the elevators began after 
a week of downpours. creases 
of the sidewalk still mucky 
from silt & river grime. some believe
in omens but i believe only in
arrivals. what if what is forthcoming
is part of the advent? i think of 
snail trails & bread crumbs.
out my bedroom window
i can see the machine. tempted, 
i put on slippers to walk out to it.
how close am i to boarding
an unknown? others come too to stare.
a neighbor asks, "is anyone 
getting inside?" we all neither say
"yes" or "no." we want to keep
the option open. cool metal caress.
i want to be delivered 
to a messy nowhere. want to have to write
a new language to describe 
the world past my imagination.
instead, with great hesitation,
we all depart. i watch the machine
for hours until, finally, in the dead of night
while you are sleeping, someone slips inside.
no deliberation. no words.
decesive. up it goes until it's gone.
i feel relief & sorrow. no more temptation.
no more day-dusk-night dreaming.
secretly, i hope another 
is soon to follow. hope it comes
right into the bedroom. door wide open.
little white light inside.

how many stomachs do cows have?

i use the third & fourth stomaches
to store orphaned earrings
& stray shopping lists. i call them
"lost" & "found." sitting in the high chair,
someone is coming to feed me eels.
i've waited so long to tell you this.
haven't you ever gone out
into the pasture in search of
a burried heirloom? digging is difficult
with hooves. in my cow-soul i savor
every summer storm. i teach a young calf
how to read stars. maps leading back
to the hole in the mountain where
the first cow emerged fearful 
& without eyes. the second stomach 
is more of a corredor. a standing room.
there is only one chair 
& jazz plays softly all day
but not in a relaxing way. 
at this point, my whole body 
is a liminal space but that term is 
overused. what i really mean 
is my organs go no where & fear nothing.
the first stomach is just 
my grandmother's purse. still a pocket
with twenty-dollar bills in it
to be stolen by terrible girls
who want to buy black eyeliner.
two tomatoes rot on the counter.
i am the cow in the kitchen 
which is the opposite of 
a bull in a china shop. there are
stray bulls though if we end up needing one.
reproduction is over rated 
i would rather duplicate. here is
another adult in need of stockings.
there are more stomach of course
but if i told you about them
they'd lose their magic. 
what is the point of a secret
if you don't tell someone it exists.
with another stomach i once 
traveled back in time. saw men 
bored in the fields just laying 
on their backs. we have changed so little.
all the paintings hung in my stomaches
are askew. i hire a man to fix them.
he says, "this is going to cost you."
i don't have enough to fix it 
so decide it's just my aesthetic now.
tilt your head. the heirloom 
has been eaten by the earth.

emerald city

knowing you are not home
is a much clearer feeling 
than knowing you are.
i once stole a door knob & carried it
to emerald city. placed it on 
every possible passage, hoping
it might give way to a dining room.
dinner is being eaten wrecklessly somewhere.
a broken bowl is being pieced back together
but it's no where near the same.
no one was home. no one at all.
the city gleamed like a necklace.
every corredor shone & i called
my own name just to watch it skip golden
from alley to alley. no one moved.
it is possible though that everyone
was just hiding from me. cupping handfuls
of their favorite jewels. no one wants
to share their glitter anymore.
i know i don't. i left handprints
on the torsos of the great buildings.
followed the streets in their arabesques.
took a dead trolley all the way
to the castle where even sound
had a particular green. 
have you ever needed someone 
& watched them vanish?
this is what happened to me in the city.
i craved each precious corner.
souls in their washing machines.
shoe stores without ankles.
recycling the bottle 
we once kept the moon in. 
kings enough to fill centuries.
then, there i was. a girl 
so far from her gender that she could
hold colors under her tongue.
so many kinds of green. 
followed the smell of corn husks 
until i came home. nothing at all emerald.
people moving about as if 
there was always somewhere to end the day.
as if nothing at all 
was ever green for them.

boundaries machine

i want you to know i don't begin 
where you end. i begin 
in dwindling october daylight
when the plow drivers 
shut off their monsters.
there both our bodies 
are the eldest corn stalks.
our roots are a love language. 
i am always knitting a field 
where my chest used to be.
use gorilla glue to fix
paper wings you made me.
put them back in place.
fly as desperate as late season bees.
cut corners. crimp hallways
into rippled paths. 
raise my translucent fences
with signs that say "i want to be
entered." make yourself at home
& stay awhile. there are berries
wash & ready. 
i have the boundary machine running
in case i fall in love with you.
then, the device will
slip us both into glass boxes
& you know what they say
about people in glass boxes.
stealing a pair of your socks.
snipping off a lock of
you hair to feed my lantern.
what keeps you up at night?
i think in cyclones about
how sometimes i send a thought
like a paper airplane 
to your ear & it comes out
of your mouth. it's like
i am a river & you are a river
& here we are parceling out water.
when i see you i want to say
"please take my house."
i don't have a house. 
doors drop dead. you ring
a bell outside on the street.
my machine roars alive. 
puts my heart in a hope chest
with blankets & a wedding dress. 
come here anyway. let's break windows
& chairs tables & altars.

popcorn room

in my heat incarination 
i learned how to speak pure
& without any kernels. 
opening the door to the room
at the top of the highest staircase.
our house of catastrophies
& trophies. who is the greatest
grimace of them all. who can bare
the weight of earthworms
as they find their way
out of the spigot. instead,
here is the play dungeon.
exactly where nothing matters 
but depth. mice feed 
on the underbellies of clouds
but not here. this is 
the purity room for those for whom
purity was never an option.
pure like gems & never like bodies
because there's no such thing.
butter machine in the corner.
wading through the field of 
mindless flowers. do you remember
how you discovered your particular 
rupture? i was imagining 
a dandelion's ancient head
& a boy blowing all the seeds
free into the wind. he was 
a boy just like me. chest smiling 
with scars. not a single tuft left. 
it's about clearing space & what is removed
to open it. my heart's drain plug.
pull me out of the fire. pull me
out of the pile. no more shoes.
no more neckties, only
the crispness of popcorn under foot.
i was born in a paper bag
then carried to a scale to be weighed.
we all know the room is there
but to speak of it would be
to diminish its lure. describe for me
exactly how you like to season your air.
i inhale sugar twine.
as god to bind my hands 
behind my back & push the door closed
with his booted foot. 

my father is making bernie sanders

sitting on the edge of his seat
with a jar of model paint & a tiny brush. 
i come home to try & dig myself
from a delgue of winter depression.
my father has glasses he never wears 
& a necktie hanging from the ceiling fan.
he mows the lawn. he finds himself 
often in folding chairs. three bernie sanders
& then five. i ask him what he plans
to do with the bernie sanders & he says
"sell them." the sun goes orange.
i come to witness his creations alone.
a congregation. a flock. bernie's crossed legs.
dad says, "no one
wants to work anymore." his hands 
are leathered from being half man
& half conveuyer belts. he drives
a dying red van. says prayers 
it will start in the morning cold. 
takes off his shoes like caskets.
his pale feet. i tried phone banking once
for bernie sanders. they coached us to
"tell the caller why bernie matters to you."
i thought of my father but could never 
find a narrative. half the time i hung up
out of fear. he paints bernie's hands
with precision & care. are they 
his children? rows & rows of bernie figures.
more sizes now all sitting 
on a windowsill in the sun room.
do we all want to save our fathers?
i want to ask for one to keep. a father
or a bernie statue, i'm not sure which. 
set on a shelf in my house. my own
bernie sanders. when my father looks at them
what does he see? he keeps making more
& has not sold a single one 
nor is he trying to. i am often proud
of my father. he drinks a beer
reading a book on world war one. 
he does not cross his legs 
but he does furrow his brow.
often he'll say, "i'll be dead soon"
to which any surrounding family members
will say, "no no stop" unsure of what else 
could thwart my father's efforts.
in the dark i visit the bernies again.
hold one in my hand before placing it back
amoung his brothers.

planting

i lost a tooth while chewing 
on a comet. stuck a sunflower seed
in its place & waited with my mouth open.
sprawled out in the backyard like
a garden house. angels came & stood
in a perfect circle to inspect my body.
batted their myriad of eyes.
this is what i do for the sake 
of perminance. the empty space
cannot be empty. stuffing cardboard 
into the windy closet. once my gender
was a piece of insulation. then, winter
attested to the thickness of our walls.
i wore nothing but a bra in the mirror.
the mirror softened to silk & all of a sudden
i was screen-printed. the flower took root.
dug deep into my skull with her ankles.
reminded me of other people's sisters.
their distant glory & long hair
& hair-tie around the wrist. 
every street funnel into my mouth.
bees asked each other about yellow.
one great sunflower standing straight.
my tongue's new neighbor. bitter taste
of new families. an emptiness once filled
goes somewhere else. my tooth hole now
waits as a wide open shoe box 
or maybe a hollow dress-pocket.
travels with determination & lust.
what does it mean to contain nothing?
my uterus believes in the future.
fills herself with peach pits.
i tell her it's only a matter of time
before i press a sunflower seed
into her mouth too. spitting out sun.
taking three big gulps of water. 
is it selfish to decide every opening
can hold a ladder? i build another
from steam. another from syrup.
standing in the mouth of a sunflower now.
standing & waiting for sunset 
when the dark makes us all 
thankfully less tangible.

harvest time

that year the fields burst with one limb.
the sky bled purple all through summer 
by the time the dirt was ready,
ripened to a deep eggplant october.
we were never sure what would grow. 
i remember being small & one year 
we culivated acres of squash the shape
of goose necks. in another memory 
my father hauls grape fruit in a basket
from the yard. it is always a comprise.
you cannot get exactly what you want
from a field. crops are a combination
of the will of god & alchemy.
we had scattered juju bees in the soil
hoping for fruit. my mother pinned
a picture of an apple tree to the door.
she bought a pie dish. my father craved lemons.
he painted the bright yellow fruit 
on the walls of the living room.
it was my fault then i think. i asked 
for softness no fruit could manage
imagining myself kissing boys 
just like me. running with them through
the barren field in winter. snow in their hair.
boys like me. short boys with plum-small hands.
& so hands rose from the dirt. first just 
fingertips. the whole family went out
to inspect them to be sure we'd seen right.
yes, fingers. july deepended & hands rose
to the middle of the palm. alone,
i caressed them. the hands never moved
but they were warm. then, by october,
whole arms reaching for a corner of sun.
i laid down in the hands & let them graze
my skin. my whole family knew then 
what i wanted. i could not face them.
this field of my longing. how has desire
emerged so alive? held a fresh hand 
& kissed its back before slipping inside.
waiting for the year to close
& the field to once again by nothing
but a possibility. after the arms though
i knew the field listened more closely
than i'd thought before. there was then maybe
no delightful randomness but rather
a knowing. the earth hearing our bodies
& responding with whatever kind of growth
it could muster. was the field a mirror 
or a response? i saved a hand from that year.
it sleeps in a shoe box in the back of the closet.
withers to bone.

helmets

we flea-marketed our defenses.
found them in a pile of army-green.
everything in the world was 50% off that day.
tried them on & used each other's eyes
as mirrors. saw myself in the circuits
of your iris. a race track moving 
always towards the unknown. the war 
went on so long that we didn't know 
where the boundaries were. often
whole battles were fought inside 
an individual. standing there hearing
a horse gallop through my own heart.
how could it be we were all ghosts?
or, maybe worse, maybe war is what
makes ghosts of us. in my helmet though
i felt safe & so did you. bombs bounced
off my skull & found another body
to destroy. there is a law of the 
conservation of catastrophy: if you avoid
annihilation, it is coming for someone else.
the helmet then is a selfish apparatus.
it makes me feel dolphin & i grip
both its edges with my thumb & forefinger.
only at night do i remove it 
to gaze inside & see a cathedral ceiling 
complete with choir song. you use yours
as a bowl. fill it with lake water
& go fishing. pull a trout to earth.
wriggling in the grass. you ask
"should i throw him back?" but it is
too late. there is no backwards 
when it comes to water. i do not share
my helmet like you do yours.
a missile grazes our skin while we sleep.
we know only by a streak of purple 
drawn across our left cheeks.
kisses of death. i strap the helmet back on.
i can feel a battle blooming
just on the other side of the street.