aphid

do you recall your green smallness?
how we ambled across leaf
finding manna on every furrow?
above, the birds gave each other wedding rings.
the lady bugs set up a phonograph
& danced like supper plates. all we could do
was think of teeth. our mandibles knitting
the body behind us. sweet nectar.
stories of the first mother
who fell down & shattered to make us.
tell me friend, how miniature would you be
if you could? i think i would want
to be so tiny not even the wind
could see me. i would want to walk
in circles around tongues unfelt 
& undiscovered. they say life comes
in circles but mine has always arrived
spherical. hula hoops roll 
up & down a driveway. animals 
with all kinds of machines. trees 
holding binoculars. two boys kissing
between the tall grass. summer was
nothing but a picture show. sitting down,
eating, we could feel the sweat 
of all the tomorrows. sun dipped in milk.
you are a good friend. you should
join me & traveling to another leaf.
my favorite is basil. reminds me 
of children. of being new & wild.
i am old now & soon to be part of the grass.
tell me though, tell me, just how minute 
you would live? i want to fit you
in my heart. carry you to every taste.
deliver you were everything is verdant
& everything is us.   

the taxidermists's lover

he talks animal all into the night
while i barefoot myself into my books.
take handfuls of ground beef 
& lay them to rest in the cast iron pan.
heat teaches away pink and red. 
he tells me i'm prone to over cooking things.
like him, i want to be sure what we swallow
remains still. his hands like dead doves. his throat,
the warden of an old piano. outside 
i stare into the woods looking for a ghost.
when i was a boy i used to make burials 
for bird skeletons i'd find up on the hill
by the old decaying housing. nothing but
their bricks. i would knit flowers
into their feathers & say an our father.
the church bells would come over me
like a flock. then, one day, i lifted a bird
i thought was dead & he came back
to life. fluttered & called & disappeared
into the trees above the railroad.
i prefer the full creatures. stay away from him
when he works on just a face. a row 
of elk & deer staring foreward like a jury.
their bodies still running away.
should it trouble me 
he is just as careful with the dead
as he is the living? climbs into me.
traces a finger from my chin 
to the center of my chest. kisses my neck.
we have so many last suppers with just our skin.
a drawer of glass eyes. real eyes
becoming no wheres in their dirt.
this week he mounts a barn owl & i have
visions of waking up to find the bird
alive again & perched on the bedpost.
my lover still asleep. me awake.
me awake opening the window 
& telling the bird to go. 

fishing liscense

he showed me how to cast out.
where the weights go. fish eyes beneath
lake surface. his bare feet. july,
a pinwheel of humid & longing.
all afternoon i watched his biceps.
sturdy muscles moving like covenant. 
reel the line in again.
holding his breath, finger on the line
with a gentleness i wish he would give
to my throat. a father is a body 
who searches elsewhere while you search
for him. hunting in the woods for elk.
pointing a bow & arrow at a deer's stare.
sifting in the lake 
for trout. trout's blushing sides
& speckled heart. then, me 
sitting on the blue cooler 
& trying to identify birds as they darted
from branch to branch above.
cardinal. cat bird. crow. a feather
touching the lake's surface. 
bag of potato rolls for bait.
him, waving to me. branishing a hook
& asking me to add a new lure.
to be drawn from the darkness
by a mistake. his callous hands around
fishing rod's meager handle.
why could he never claim me
like this? like urgent & "get the bucket"
& salvation & the hook through skin.
birds flushing in our commotion.
fish in the cooler shuttering
for the cool wet of his life.
a son, just like me: wet & wayward
beyond the reeds. 

one room school house

all of our pencils were gods. a slate
to write our father's names. in the yard
everyone was a tulip until they weren't.
burrying dolls up to their necks.
call me a garden 
& i'll scream. all our shoe laces
untied & shedding skin. the teacher,
long gone, was not worth our attention.
she was the shape of a pound cake
& had wooden tops for eyes. horses are
programming computers in their fields.
soon we will have a telephone line
to ask jesus what to do with our names.
i kiss a girl on the pigtail & she
wags her finger at me saying 
"it's not april yet." how rude of me.
i used to want to learn everything. 
press my ear to the black board
& hear the rustling of pages.
now i just crave mirage. hallucination 
in the heat off the road. some classmates
hitchhike home. i'm not so bold. 
i got out to the darkness & ask
for comradery. un-lesson from the day.
remove gloves & petticoat. 
no more vocabulary. no more long division.
only the heart's mitosis. slipping & splitting new.
i built the school in my own beneath.
lifted a single floor board. then went &
took my child out from between ribs
where he perched. 
the boy had been counting 
all the figs on earth.
fed him midnight oatmeal & told him
to never be good. he asked
"are you the teacher?" & i said 
"yes but don't tell anyone." 
the new school day tomorrow will 
test the strength of the parameter. 
fences are meant for disregarding.
a dog in the lesson jumping 
clean over the sun & never
coming back down. 

medicine cabinet vacation

there was an ice rink on my face
where i stored all my solutions.
mirror, a sister prayer book, taught me
how to be asymetrical. a little more
to the right. tilting the room 
so all the water rolls down. 
i always check inside. use the box cutter.
use my natural sense of poor direction.
deploy a lexicon of verbs that all mean
"to decay." to spoil. to fester. to 
wither. whether or not you agree
there is going to be a cure, someone 
will drink a cup of purple 
with their eyes closed & think
"finally." a bandaide with 
no wound beneath it. the texture 
of burned skin. teaching the shower
how to make veils. needle pricking
the thumb. i could have been 
a scientist. i could have taken 
one train to the other side of the glass
& sat there for weeks feeling employable.
crossed my legs & un-crossed them.
have you ever asked the moon 
for advice? i do that to every
medicine cabinet i meet. i say
"hello there, how should 
live a less fractured life?"
& they always say, "why would
you want to do that?" it's a lesson
in folding the paper before
you tear it. i search for phone books
just to cross out my name.
no. that's not me. there's no such thing
as another. sleeping. i am
sleeping on a shelf. beautiful & blurred.
a bird in my hand. it is not 
morning or night. it is vacation 
& i am waiting for my body
to come back to me. 

ice fishing in july

we cut a hole in the sun with a can opener.
saw hot-glow fish thrash like irises.
our skin peeled off to the bone & we were 
skeleton-shadows on the dry grass.
hunger is the hand of worry. how how how.
summer, unpocketable no matter how hard
we try to fold & fit. wanting to carry days
like saltines. a nail in the wall to hold a cross. 
basement safe from ocean but not safe
from fatherhood. crouching to lick fingers.
faucet whispering one one one. how should
we close our entrances? keep a backpack full
of doorknobs. accept defeat & windspeed.
get the fire going. afterall, this is the desert.
rubber shoes melted by the UV rays. 
violet teeth to put in the dishwasher.
there was no sign of rain but the clouds
told their own tall tales of mercury
asking god each year to make himself smaller.
our deserves are more celestial & less bodily 
than we think. once, a star perched on my sill
& talked to me as rudely as a car alarm.
i shooed him off & then felt guilty.
it is nearly impossible to say what we 
really mean. i don't really mean ice fishing.
i mean standing on a precarious surface
& not becoming the underneath. i mean fish muscle.
i mean the cold unknown waiting to future us.
tomorrow is a new spell of string. 
the fish are ravenous for air.  

no sign of hometown 

no on the highway necklace 
or even in the green dumpster.
a flashlight to the forward & nothing
but deep & deep. whistling just
to have the distance whistle back.
i left it right here at this exit
& hometown grinned at me & waved.
i just wanted to plant an earbud or
an eraser. i can't remember which.
we could have easily wandered 
to the park's green face. we could have
tied the street signs in knots. 
somewhere a movie is eating through
fence & farmland. reading the backs 
of my hands. veins like telephone lines.
operators in the graves still reaching
to connect a call. hometown was lush
this time of year. hairnets riddled
with fireflies. hometown swallowed deeply
& never slept. was barefoot & saved.
took slow breaths. calmed even the crows.
mountains doing new graces. the hills 
rolling without where. sleeping in the trunk.
a tire rolling in our hearts through
what we used to know as staircase. 
sitting on a stoopless stoop. the house
a new nowhere. hometown dried. 
hometown in the reeds. hometown hidden
like a baby basket or a belt buckle. 

emotional support goldfish

made my chest an aquarium. 
added plants & pebbles & a filter that
churned through the night. slept 
standing up so as to not spill.
i wanted a piece of the sun but i settled
for goldfish. at the pet store
they all stared at me & said 
"not me not me." i promised it would
not be too bad to be loved.
promised i would buy more than one
so they wouldn't get lonely. as a girl,
we had many pet fish. betas & neon fish
& a few aquatic frogs. their lives 
were like toothpicks. bones turned to hairs.
ghosts in the unswept corners & under
side tables. aimlessly looking
for a great endless water. i filled the tank.
three shiny goldfish. placed a hand
to my chest to feel their color. 
named them new each day. names are 
a silliness reserved only for humans.
fish call each other by futures.
fed them pellets & flakes. sung to them
like embryos. a child is always
a floating relation. requires water.
my goldfish children told me i was worthy.
i asked, "of what?" & they didn't respond
or maybe they intend to respond later.
i walked out into the street & no one knew
all the water inside me. they just saw
a human, clasping his hands together
as if in prayer. i might be
always praying or i might never be.
the goldfish made no promises. 
died like hardboiled eggs one by one.
i didn't bury them. waited for each
to leave my mouth as a bird. 

over-sized load

i want to travel with a warning label.
trailed by smaller cautions. we drove
all the way to the ocean & fed our door knobs
to the god of the water. i could have been
so much larger. a skyscraper or a red wood.
i could have had fingers the length
of dinner plates. i could have had 
an echo reaching past the moon. laying 
on my back & becoming delivered. no one told me
the arriving would be do hefy. a flag 
protruding from my back. a bag of feathers
on the nightstand. no more assembly for me.
i just want to pick up the whole world
& lift it with me. my volume is less
than you would expect at the first sip.
he was a good enough man. not great 
or wise but he had a way of bending over
like a saint. everything is religious 
until it's too late. the highway crawls.
i wear the sides of the road like gills.
pollution is all the rage. i close my eyes.
bathe in daylight then drench in dark.
where are you taking me, my barbed wire love? 
the final yard is a dream of silence.
no more street lights or timers. 
just the whoosh of a passing cargo. 
how would you like to be taped shut?
who is the currier & who is the carried
in your relationship? i lose a door
on the side of the road. deers knock at it
all year until, in the dead of night,
it opens to somewhere only they can see.
wildlife is seldom as green as this. 
the cabinets buzz with guilt. here i come. 

the discovery of tea

once, we boiled in the tortoise shell. 
shed leaves from our heads & dried them
on pavement. all our scabs had names:
oceania & baltica & rodinia. watched each sprout
red & wonderous before our eyes. walked down
to wash in sunlight. here is how you 
clean a wound. here is how water turns amber
from glass. faceup floating in the bath 
losing pieces of our souls down the drain.
living is the process of coming apart or
more precisely, how you make breadcrumbs 
of a body. i clip my finger nails & line
my little smile-moons up on the windowsill.
drinking deeply from the clay mug & passing it
along the line. everything is warmer now.
face full of faultlines. eating with my fingers
in the kitchen dark. who knew we could 
sing with a thumb over our throats. 
a bird at the back of the cupboard
with all the rest of the dried words.
sudden & promising. deepening dark. 
a whole lake turned maroon with waiting.
sugar cubes balanced on noses. i raise my hand
to find it gone to the water too.