trust fall

i end up on the other side of 
the moon with my feet in the air.
we buy only left shoes 
for a whole year & try to get along.
i have snippets of a dream in which
i am unprepared. i cross my arms
across my chest & ask you to catch me.
you do not (cliche) or you do (cliche).
we eat ice cream until the sun
is bored & goes to get his hair done. 
when you get right down to it
there is not much to do. once i fell 
& my guardian angel caught me. 
i saw his horror face & screamed. 
"there is too much screaming" someone says
who has had the pleasure of not
having their lungs scream at them
or their joints scream at them or the sky
sometimes shake her fist & scream at them.
i prefer movies with no trust & no story.
let the vibe knit us a great trust.
something warm as a golden bowl
of melted butter. when i was small
& could not sleep i would beg for
cinnamon sandwiches. wheat bread 
with bitter cinnamon. i think i craved
a really solid fall. i learned 
how to get up on the roof of the house
from my dad. there he stood one morning
& i asked him, "have you been here
all night?" he asked,
"can i trust you?" that is how i learned
to catch someone three times my size.
he is shrinking now so it'll be easier
if i end up there again. sometimes i want
to ask my brother if he ever caught 
our father but i think it might end up
sounding like i'm bragging. it is always
better to do the catching than the falling.
i have mastered doing both
at once. we played "trust falls"
in elementary school when the sun
was a softer color. a girl with cucumber melon
body spray caught me. i forget if it 
was in gym class or just the playground.
i remember feeling surprise at the lack
of catastrophe. no one dropped anyone.
not even the boys. not even the bells.
not even the sky. 

false sense of security

moments before alligator,
we all drove to the mouth of the waterfall
where no legs were supposed to exist anymore.
i used to sleep only four or so hours 
a night back then. i think, "no wonder 
i was crazy & on fire." i loved you though
like only a fire can love. tongue around
the heel. we walked in greenwich village
& smelled cigarettes & lost music. 
there were billboards with our bones on them.
i am envious of everything my fledgling teeth
had not bitten down on. the windows 
that had not turned into terrariums around me.
never go toe to toe with the dark,
it always has something else to spit
into the sky. a boy without a face. a train
that rides, passengerless towards the end 
of the island. & to think i used to float 
on my back in the public pool & not see
a chandelier above me. just the clouds, each 
a zoo room. how soon before the jaw
do the lungs know they are flags?
sometimes still we talk on the phone 
while i'm driving. i think of how small
the beds we slept in were. no choice
but to hold on to each other. 
i have always thought innocence is
overrated but then again it has been a long time
since i had a carpet like that. sometimes
on the right night, i walk for days until
i reach a pair of knees. they knock together.
all the doors in the world have kitchen knives
behind them. i chase myself back
into the warmth like i do for the chickens
at dusk. a fox calls me four times.
i don't pick up. he leaves a voicemail 
claiming to be my mother. my real mother
leaves a head of lettuce on the porch.
there is a police car on the moon & a police car
up the street & a police car grazing in the field. 
i keep my face in the top drawer next to the keys. 

holy infomercial morning 

in middle school i liked to be
the first one up. the house cracked
her knuckles. i washed my face
with loud bar soap & sat alone
to watch the infomercial channel.
there were women with perfect hands 
& rotating spatulas & machines meant
to keep your meatloaf from sticking.
a vacuum seal god. a magic towel. i watched
until the television came alive with cartoons.
i came to crave the infomercials more
than the stories to follow. i loved
the repetition, how sometimes the same
three hour commercial would play
for weeks. i memorized their mantras 
like strange prayers for an easy life.
the hosts were either perfect women
or shouting men with thick beards 
& shiny teeth. their genders, polished &
tidy. i waited with anticipation
for my favorites: the round cake pan
& zoo books full of bright animals. 
we never ended up getting any 
of the items from the commercials. 
that made the shows more meaningful
to me. a glimpse over & over of that which
will never come. the way the hosts
hold the products like treasure. after the infomercials
arthur would come on & my dad would come home
from the night before. no one but me
knew anything about my affinity for 
long-form advertisements. my secret realm 
of strange desire. the host begging, "call now."
i wished i had a credit card so i could pick up
the phone & answer their pleas. instead, 
sun rise knocked on the windows. the day crawled
out of its numbers. my father drove
the winding roads from the factory back to 
our blue back door. 

water foundation

i cut a hole in the gourd & get 
a whole lot more thirsty. we should be
fighting grammar as often as possible.
sometimes i punch my pronouns
until they give me what i want. 
(they never give me what i want).
if anything i am pro not-making-any-sense.
my memory is going which is either
a good sign or a bad sign depending
on how you look at it. sometimes i forgot
as an act of self protection & other times
my mind has a shovel & together we dig until
there is no floor left. online i watch videos
of a man remodeling an old victorian house.
he pulls up the floor & the next floor
& the next. i own a house now which is
confusing. i never thought i would survive
this long so each day feels kind of like
a mirage. there is an angel that lives 
in the well beneath the house & sometimes
i hear her singing in the pipes. i don't know
if there is a better way to say this but 
i could drink water until i make myself
into a pond. manmade is an oxymoron.
the land makes us & we run as far away as possible.
i do not want another scab of concrete where
there should be milkweed. i want a fountain
where we can all take off our skin & be tangled.
in a city where i don't belong i trace the telephone wires
like veins on the back of a hand. 
my grandmother was never happy 
with her life. i could see it in between her teeth. 
there are enough pennies in the fountain 
to feed the whole town. we all eat consonants 
like soft pretzels until we are sick & doughy. 
nothing left to say but the open mouth drain
of the "o." not a surprise but a foothold.
not a "catch" but a "caught" & a "hold." 

wedding train

i have accepted that i already have brain rot.
we go to the park to harvest acorns alongside
the squirrels who are working on getting
as fat as they can for the snow globe. 
some of the acorns have little white worms inside. 
i let them loose on the compost 
so they can have a disco. i have become addicted 
to wedding content. drama is best 
when someone is dressed all in white. 
i bought a wedding dress at a thrift store once. 
it smelled like an attic but i loved it. 
i took wedding pictures in the forest. knit a train
out of cities i had left. the stoplights dragging
on my heels. everywhere is beautiful at 9pm at night
no matter the time of year. a fallen light. animals singing,
"good bye good bye good bye." i don't know
where the dress ended up. i think i remember it
standing up one sunset & running towards
the turkey hill gas station at the bottom
of the mountain. i think she wanted to get
a really wild stain. blue raspberry. i scroll & 
the videos turn into jump rope. i don't want
to lose myself but i am not sure what is left anyway.
a bride on a video complains about her
wooden bouquet of flowers. i did not know
until this moment that wooden bouquets existed.
the tree inside a rose inside fist inside 
tongues that butter the porch light. i saw
an article that said the color of the year is 
a pale yellow. i think of the bellies of the acorns' worms.
my skull full of them. i am sure of this. 
who do i go to for help? the mirror is bursting
with alarms. a fire starts elsewhere & drowns the sky red. 
the worms scroll of their phones too & so do
their worms. a chain of rot deep into the guts
of our autumn. one bridge on a video advises 
her followers, "never do what i did."
i have already forgotten what she did. 
my wedding dress tries to forget that she
was mine. goes to a diner & orders bottomless coffee
until the whole world is dressed in white
& the sky wriggles. we jar the acorn meat. 

anomaly 

a pair of shoes in the 24 hour pawnshop window 
has a dream of running to your face.
my favorite part about new cities 
is the weightlessness.
tonight i am in dayton eating 
red curry in a window with
broken blinds. everyone has a cold
& the air coughs up feathers. 
at a corner store i buy chia pudding 
that makes me feel like i’m eating 
frog eggs. spring is as far away 
as it can get & at night i can taste 
the mushrooms beneath the bark.
you miss me more than you usually do
& i wonder if you know more
or less about me than when we first met.
on the way to the airport the world 
is dark as grass jelly & there are
somehow police everywhere. you text me
that you left your ringer on 
in case i need you. when we first met
i used to call you whenever we were 
apart even though neither of us 
can hear well enough to have 
a conversation. our voices like
butter planes in the dark. 
is there still grapes in the fridge?
was someone in this city here
with as many shovels as me?
i waited for an uber in a square where
just a few years ago there was 
a mass shooting. artists had tried
to make sense of it. i don’t remember 
the title. something about seeds. 
flowers grew. i talked to them.
a little black-eyed susan, asked me,
“is this your face or mine?”
i did not answer. the sun was already 
washing her face. i rolled my eyes 
in sugar. bought a bag of cranberries. 
woke three times in the night 
to look for you.  

spider 

i have been talking too much 
to the spiders. i learn their webs 
& watch as their abdomens swell 
with buzzing lockets. we bounce 
from subject to subject. i never know 
what humans are supposed to talk about.
my partner says, “it’s like you fell
from the sky.” the spiders sometimes 
descend like gymnasts from the ceiling 
while i am hunched over a keyboard.
they mistake the screen for a fresh sun.
all the planets i know of are worn out.
i would be too if i were pulling rocks 
from the darkness. i don’t kill spiders 
instead i cradle them to elsewhere in our house.
i try to explain the cruelty that is 
a body. the light goes right through 
my spiders. the one i met yesterday 
could fit his whole life on
my thumb nail. the spiders rarely 
respond. when they do it’s in prophecies 
“soon we will knit” & “when the deer
get back to the moon.” 
those make more sense to me
than most of my life lately. 
sometimes i confide in them,
“i am unsure i have ever been 
where i should be.”
the needle-leg mother asks,
“could you weave?” i respond,
“yes.” she’s answers,
“then you have found a place.” 
in the morning i nearly walk into
a web with the precision of a
stained glass window. one panel missing 
no host. i too have left
a part of my sky unfinished. 

advents 

we kick open doors to find
chocolate on the other side. i know
the year is rapidly coming
to a carnival because every store
is selling advent calendars. 
all day i have been fantasizing about 
disobedience. do you think we can
make the powerful feel the fear we do?
is it worth it? or am i just supposed
to open doors until there are 
no doors left? until the year is slippery 
& done? i have become less & less sure
what i want to happen. as a child,
i craved the advent calendar. my mother,
cunning as always, bought calendars
with bible verses beneath the flaps.
she would read them aloud as 
i chewed the sweet treasure. a brief
breath of milk chocolate. each shaped
like an angel or a star or some other
symbol for glory. i don't remember
any of the verses but i remember exactly
how a piece of milk chocolate melts
on your tongue. the days when my brother
got the piece instead of me. the way cold wind
moved through the old house. then, in the 
creaky last days of the year, how the calendar
sat vacant. nowhere else for us 
to burst into. i don't buy the calendars anymore.
i do not even track the moon like
i probably should. i feel like doors are
something that happens to me 
rather than that which i open. i see a picture
of a local slumlord's house online. it is huge &
i imagine it as an advent calendar. 
what do they count down? i am looking
for hope in bites. in windows. in doors. 
in holding on to autumn. i open a door.
the bathroom light like a star or an angel. 

killer

sometimes we end up in a horror movie.
the killer is outside painted by the mango light
from the neighbor's porch. when i feel up to it,
i invite the killer inside. he is confused. 
used to chasing. designed to chase. i feed him
beans & rice & we talk about the moon.
he lays his knife down on his thigh & removes
his face. nothing but a void beneath. 
to be kind on occasion i will agreed to playing
out the scene. he will give me a running start
& i will burst from the front door. try to start
the car. he is in the back seat. on the radio
there is a story about another dictator & 
the killer thinks it ruins the mood. he believes
there is honor is his kind of horror. the big burning kind
he is opposed to. he has strong morals. fears
should be earned. chased for. not massive. 
a replacement of the sun. he never leaves before sunrise.
always over stays his welcome. wants to talk
politics. wants to get me riled up. i ask him,
"why are you a killer?" which makes his laugh.
he always responds the same, "why are you a victim?"
this is when i kick him out. when i lock the doors.
when i look at my own kitchen knives & try
to decide which one would be best for defending myself.
i saw a sticker on a trashcan that read,
"those who believe violence is never
the answer have never had to fight for their life."
i wonder who we are to each other, me & the killer
& the big movie that i never get to see. 
my attention span is not what it used to be.
i think i have lost the desire to get it back. i have accepted
that i will live my life in clips. the running.
the eggplant night. the persistence of the killer.
on the nights when i don't let him in, 
he sometimes falls asleep. asleep, he is nothing more
than a phone flashlight. a star on the ground. 
moths dance around him until he's replaced by morning.
sun full of ants. the knife stuck in the dirt.  

fake watermelon 

sell me something that makes
my mouth water. for the most part,
i prefer the fake fruit tastes to the real ones.
something uniform & expected 
in a world of roulette sundays. 
banana candy & a grape soda dark. 
i scroll in the highway video
& every other oracle is a girl who is
hoping you will buy her tongue
from her mouth. 
i put peach rings on my fingers & go to
a job interview at the dead people place.
my partner makes fun of me
for wanting to go back to wage labor
after living off of a golden goose. 
the interviewer is a woman i have met before
who is thinking, "how easy will they
be to hurt?" she asks me what kind
of ghost i would be. i am the poltergeist always. 
i took karate as a kid & i remember nothing
but the smell of sweat & those gymnastics mats. 
don't tell my dad though, he's always been
really invested in me becoming a killing
machine & not the state-sanctioned kind.
once i save a bird from the tall grass. 
his wing was hurt & he was begging
for some sour patch watermelon candies.
i told him we should find him a real fruit.
i taught him how to fly again. he stole
a strand of my hair as a memento. i hope he
was just being sentimental & not planning
on some witchcraft but you know,
if he is i'm flattered. i might as well 
collect another hex. the fake watermelons
knock on the doors at night. my partner says,
"please don't let them in." i usually do 
& just hope he doesn't notice. i am not good
at being a wife. i am also not good at being
a husband. i enjoy most just being
something kept. a door inside a door.
i don't buy candy most of the time. i don't have
a reasonable hunger. i put off my cravings
so long that i just want to eat through
the day & into the midnight. juice down 
my face. the fake watermelons with their 
almost laughter. the sandpaper sugar
of a good sour dream. it is hard to be full
in a place like this.