charcoal artist 

the dog's vision is contagious.
soon i am only seeing grey world
& it is better that way. once, in college
a charcoal artist came into
my bedroom & sketched me
without any bones. i don't remember
if he was a friend or a stranger.
i was popular on my hall because i had
an air conditioner. i get a clothesline
& hang up my skin. there is 
a flyer in our town for a missing dog.
these always activate my savior complex.
i drive around for hours looking,
as if i might be the one to find the creature.
i get the whole montage going in my head.
finding the animal. coaxing him from
behind a bush. driving him to his owner.
the praise. who doesn't just
want to be praised? i sometimes find
a missing sign with my face on it.
i tear them down & eat them whole.
upstairs we have a set of charcoals. 
sometimes i will take a piece out & draw
my grief. great spirals & a burning bush. 
my lover once painted my legs in full color.
all the purples & reds & yellows. bruises
& scrapes. i wanted to see them in charcoal. 
i too am the offspring of fires. the ships
that crashed & the parchment animals 
going skinless in the dark. there are lost dogs 
standing on the roof one morning.
i tell them to wait until i can find someone
to help. there is no one to help. in a town
of mailboxes & portraits there is 
no one to help. i sketch the dog from
the missing sign. the rain comes. turns
paper into pulp. washes out the image
until there is only black & white & blur. 

wallpaper maker's lover

i know it is selfish but i look for myself
in the designs. the great scroll unspooling
from the wrack. he wipes his palms
on his apron. runs a hand through
his hair. the sun enters barefoot
in the spring. i tell no one that i come
to watch him. sit in the crooked chair
while he repeats the same symbols 
over & over. arabesque & apple. they always
look like bodies to me. our bodies.
a bent knee. his curly hair. he has never
seen my home. how could he? it is small.
a rented room. how could i explain
bringing another man quietly into 
my darkness? instead, we have this place.
his workshop. the repetition of our lives 
is like that of the wallpaper. never quite 
perfect. a faded arm. an off-kilter print.
the ink stains. we have to meet before 
his workers arrive. the apprentices & 
the laborers. their aprons, just like his. 
once, a boy came too early, found 
the workshop door locked. i had never seen
him so fearful. we redressed, his face
still flushed. he whispered, "pretend
you are eyeing the designs." i understood.
he wanted me to act as if i were
a customer. i did not need to pretend
my desires. i dream often of 
my lover & i re-doing the wallpaper 
of my room. him smoothing down 
the edges of a fresh design. the wallpaper
in my room is horrible. dull. not made
by hands like his. he has asked me before
if i would like to be his apprentice. 
it would after all give us more excuses
to be behind doors together. i have always
turned him down though. i don't want
to ruin the magic of it. how he can spin 
an image over & over. cloak rooms
in his brilliant mirages. instead,
i will keep searching for myself in them. 
my back arched. his hand on my hip. 

to those who are no longer animal 

i just want the wild to be real.
for everyone to react to the horrors
as we were meant to, with wailing
& pots & pans & fire. instead,
i am just one video game prophet.
sometimes the government knows
my name & sometimes it doesn't.
i take pictures of our house. i take pictures
of our eyes. i want evidence
in case. in case in case. everything is coming
but no one knows when. there is
a new terror in the laboratory. they make
guns. they make promises. i fill 
my car with gasoline & the dinosaurs 
scream. they say, "what is a tower?"
i want to talk to someone at the end.
someone on another side. i do the ouija stuff.
i do mirror talking. they tell me
that there is only one way through 
this kind of ending but they do not 
tell me what that one way is. i pull
my red wagon with me when i go out
to the freshly tilled field where
the stars go to dance this time of year.
i ask them to gather around me. 
i want to show them how to scream. i just
need someone else to do it with me.
i need to lose my mind in a crowd of light.
i beg them, "how do i remain an animal?"
they inform me, "you do not."
we scream like only the rocks know how.
break the glass case of the sky. 
pick up the shards. i ask them if they
will help me knock on doors. i am imagining
our whole town screaming. i want that
so badly. the stars tell me that is not
their role. they climb up back into the sky.
voices soft & far away. across the road
my neighbor lets his dog
out back. did he hear the stars?
he must have. he must. 

potato 

they buy islands like sheet cakes.
write their names in sugar. 
live inside beautiful boxes
full of more beautiful boxes. 
in the kitchen we too are keepers
of boxes. cereal & soap & teeth. 
the story of humans is
the story of vessels. how much you have
& how you hold it. i open a box of 
dried potatoes. the flakes are soft like fresh snow.
i remember as a child eating a dry
mashed potato packet with my tongue. 
salty bites sticking to the roof
of my mouth. 
it was summer & the microwave 
had broken. my brother & i decided to forage.
dipped lemons in sugar as a snack. went outside
barefoot in the warm grass. somewhere
they sleep in rooms of potatoes.
potato beds & potato children.
i think more about rich people
than i would like to. i see their videos
online. their houses. their hunger
despite of all the potatoes. their summers,
endless. their children, in little boxes.
from the food pantry we get packets
of mashed potatoes. i open one to smell it.
somewhere a man is worshipping 
a fork. somewhere his teeth are bells. 
at least i am no longer jealous of them.
i see mansions & i think of them full
of mashed potatoes. all of us there 
eating from their boxes. sitting in
their boxes. laughing in their boxes. 
potatoes growing from their trees. potatoes
soft & warm. the microwave humming
like a new mother. the islands,
made of mashed potatoes, slipping back
into the ocean's brine. the thing about 
a container is that it is not eternal. 
just a small attempt to own
that which cannot be owned. again,
i eat the dried potatoes but this time 
with a spoon in the dull morning light. 
soon it will be summer. 
someday we will all be full. 

the male loneliness epidemic 

my uncle knows the opening & closing times
of every bar from here to the moon.
he recites them like bible verses 
to an empty car window in the march dark. 
once, when i was small. once when
i still talked to him, we were driving 
& he told me a story of him & his friend
drinking bottomless coffee until
their hands were shaking. they had to see how much
they could down. i asked him where 
the friend was now & he laughed. there are
eyes that open in his ceiling. he presses his thumb
to the lids to shut them. there was a girl he 
painted a mural with back when we still lived
by the railroad tracks & the old autobody factory. 
she turned into a hydrangea all blue 
& purple. sometimes i want to save him. 
i remember days in the summer when we would
go the big mall to get shiny in that light.
he builds fires just to put them out. sometimes
drains the amber guts of every bottle
he can find. then, sometimes, pours them
into the ragged grass beneath the backyard 
spruce tree where all the goldfish are buried. 
there were times in my life when i told friends
he was my second dad. now he is like
a birthday balloon on the ceiling. he buys
a treadmill. decides to eat only steak
until he is real again. flesh inside flesh. 
the blow-up mattress. the must of his doors. 
he keeps the same bright green irish spring soap
as he always did. watches horrible men
on a shrinking screen. i regret not loving him 
harder. i know it is not my fault that 
he worships furious idols. i know it is not my fault
that he walked home across the winding
cornfield roads in search of our house 
when he crashed his car into an angel. 
sometimes an old fragment will surface.
his teeth, crooked as mine. he goes 
almost everywhere alone. gender is all about
whether or not you stay. he has always left.
bottle caps like fish scales. he stays gill-less. 
never reaches the hungry boiled moon. 

yearbook

the face is a television traveler.
candid kind of mirror in
the school yard where they cut down
the tree & turned her into hair.
a goldfish hovers above my bed.
i follow her all the way to the creek.
we are thumbs in the making.
there is a computer lab with
text boxes to sleep in. my school picture
blooms like ink bloated by water.
a backpack in the sink. out the window
are girls trying to get rid of their genders.
broad daylight. legless as ever. 
when i get there i am swimming.
jujubees & lime soda. bruises 
on my knees from asking the ground
to give us onions. my hair, like
onion tassels. i try to teacher myself
but the dark of a classroom eats
the sentence. i forget a jacket. 
do a bad stuff get pinned to the brick wall.
everything in a bin of bouncy balls.
we still have the museum. full color. 
i used to think if i had enough signatures
that that meant i was real. no one knew
what to write to me. i faked signatures
sometimes for friends i wished i had.
a fever nurse place. teeth like cars 
in a line. the snow, finally coming
like flyleaf. the ghost of the old tree
laughing with the gym jungle. 
i lick my finger & wipe a smudge 
from the corner of my soft mouth
in his zoo box picture. 

tea room (not) on fire 

i  have no intention of ever
having afternoon tea but i do 
watch videos of it. i see people
enjoying their biscuits & 
placing sugar cubes in hot amber liquid.
clothe napkins. a shiny butter knife. 
sometimes there is a fire outside
the window. the people pluck 
finger sandwiches from a tower.
lick their thumbs. flame-proof door knobs. 
a dog plays violin. there are no servers
in their mirage. just gloved hands 
that deliver every morsel. the burning
moon & the burning girls & 
the bombs with signatures from
happy stock image men. of course 
the tea room is not a real place.
instead, it is an idea that lives in
all of our teeth. everything is plentiful. 
we are the ones deserving of rest.
as if there is not a river. as if there are
not fields of blue ghosts. i drink tea 
from a dull mug. let the steam fog
my glasses. i used to swallow
so much more tea. chamomile & lemon
& bright hibiscus. i also used to
grow my own gloved hands in 
a little pot by the window. 
i know a video is also just a window
but they feel so far away. i know i am 
also sometimes a tea person. 
when i lived on the island though
i used to drive a few blocks so that
i could see the rich people. all their lives:
tea rooms. their cars like pocketbooks. 
my beater car, toothless. without windshield wipers.
waiting on the sidewalk to be turned
into sugar. swimming towards
the lip of their hungry water, then gone. 

highway mouth

i start talking to the highway 
when it thickens to elsewhere territory.
empty motels like fisheyes 
in the blueing dark. we discuss
the weather. we muse about the trash 
& the people who come with smashed-plate knees 
to try & clean it up. the highway is sometimes
more cynical than me. we always get
to talking about the future of which
the highway does not believe in.
he is always trying to tell me 
that it is the last day on earth. i am 
by no means an optimist but 
at the very least i try to be curious.
i tell the highway, like a mother,
"the sun might have a video game 
to play tomorrow." i don't think opposites
attract so much as they intrigue one another.
the highway tells me he wants someone
to stay. no overnight. not passing through.
he wants someone to lay down on
his asphalt neck so that he can
feel them when he swallows. so that
no matter who passes through that there
is someone to keep him company.
hours in, he works up the courage to ask
if that might be me. the highway is not
a romantic. he is a rocking chair kind
of body. craves lullabies & shoelaces.
we pass a truck stop where men 
are sitting on the tops of picnic tables
& trying not to kiss each other. 
i leave the highway & his voice turns
into a turn signal's clicked tongue. 
i know one of my jobs in this world is to 
keep the liminal spaces company. i never make
promises. sometimes being a body is enough.
when i was small, i used to ask my mom
to roll down the car window so that
i could converse with the wind. she always agreed
& conjured the voice of the wind for me. 
now when i open the window, the air
talks freely. i love the way there is always
a mouth if a silence comes to eat you. 
i want to take the highway home. make him
a tv dinner. sit on the couch. brush his hair. 

gutter ball

if a mirror asks for your tongue
to keep you safe, it is not a mirror.
the bowling alley smells like feet
& i welcome the reminder 
that we have bodies. a ghost knocks
with his knuckles on the window,
makes a gesture with his head,
& leaves. i am not good at getting what
people mean. i take uneducated guesses.
take wrong turns. i roll my skull & 
it turns up gutter ball after gutter ball.
i am trying to convince my family 
to build a bunker & fill it with sugar.
in the field behind our house there are
periscopes to burp the earth. the landfill 
is watching television while nature
tries to take her shoes back. 
i like the moments when i feel righteous
& think i know what is going to happen
& when. it always changes though.
the door gets closer. a boot hanging from
my mailbox. i start removing my name.
instead, writing, "who?"
the tunnel is not a love tunnel. it is
a place where we are pins. shoulder to shoulder
hoping a horrible man misses. i do not want
to have to cover mirrors wherever i go
but that's where i'm at. a hallway 
going towards a nothing room where
we try to lay low. my partner asks me,
"are you sure you want to be dangerous?"
we are just eating. we are just bowling
in a field of corn. i don't remember
when i became dangerous. i can't aim.
i knock on doors selling girl scout cookies 
to haunted houses. i don't know
where my parents are. we are going 
to have to do this ourselves. 

limited edition flavor

everyone has their own private capitalism
like a daughter in their coffee cup. 
a hand beneath a pillow. the self without 
any lungs. the little hunger that eats the dark.
mine is a gone flavor. something marketed
with shiny teeth & iridescent packages.
mystery flavor the color of cave fish. 
i am a collector of limited editions. cereals
& cookies & boyfriends & door knobs. 
i let them cure like smoked meats.
wait until they're  stale. fists in 
plastic bags. they inspire a frenzy only known
by feet in the rain. all afternoon i go out
to the side of the road & i collect cans & wrappers.
inside each is a talisman. a bone left 
by the devourer. we are all brushing lips
& thumbs. i want the limited editions to stay
forever. to keep me company at the end of the world.
let me shove my hand into a box of heart-shaped
fruit loops. knuckles smelling like dream oranges.
when someone leaves me i make them 
a package to put on a shelf. i shred the cardboard.
i once emailed a manufacturer pleading with them
to not get rid of my favorite cereal. they responded
surprisingly with kindness. they said,
"sometimes we have to take off our gloves 
& weep." i asked if they were a poet & they emailed back,
"we are all poets until we're not." i get down
to the bottom of the box of sweet wheels.
drive the car to the supermarket without you.
call you five times until the phone expires. 
i do not want the only promise to be that
a new brief handful is on the horizon. still, i chase them.
climbing onto the roof. convening with
the conveyor belt gods. a machine with a belly
of sugar. it is never long enough.