familial dentistry 

we have crowded mouths. once, i opened mine
& a swarm of cicadas flew out & into a nearby tree.
how long ago was seventeen years? i have been
stealing teeth since i was two when i reached,
fecklessly into my uncle's throat where rested a tooth &
a bundle of sticks. you know what they call a bundle of sticks?
the tooth was made of jade stone. the tooth shape-shifted 
into a lighter. watching him smoke a cigar on the porch.
sweet leaf smell. rolling myself in a leaf for safety.
i have so many crooked teeth. i look in a mirror & i see
gravestones jutting from dirt. often, widows will come
& leave flowers on my tongue. my mother, 
stirring a pot of promises, has lemon rinds for gums. 
unlik her i'm not prone to citrus. nothing sharp
about my talking. everything is air pilot & 
pizza kitchen. throwing a handful of teeth into the air.
a spoon for craddling teeth into the garden.
planting & hoping for more to grow. sharks, as you know,
they keep yielding teeth their whole lifetime.
no shortage there. my body makes me feel 
so deeply un prepared for my own life. who decided
on the tongue? the lips? two row boats. paddling harder.
in the dentist chair, my father clasped his hands together
like an acolyte. asked for the procedure to be over
as the dentist pried a carrot from his soil.
roots down all the way into the ocean. he cried
i held his hand. when the tooth was out i pocketed it
& i said, "what tooth? where?" i have it still.
yellowed along one side & prone to minnow swimming.
someday, when i need it, i'll fix his tooth in my own mouth 
root & all

cow heart garden

in the first chamber we were 
burger-hungry & ready to grind. 
pushed meat through a hole the size
of a penny & waited on the other side
for a process to begin. often, the flowers
bloomed like severe hearts. pink blood
in our faces. the oxygen blue 
of early july. then, in the second 
we asked each other's middle names.
held them like quarters for a future
machine. made all the wonderful 
unkeepable promises. your nose against
my neck. your body a school of rings.
all the while the cows crouched
on their hind legs trying to be teenagers.
we snacked on onion grass & drank 
milk from the stream. wiped our lips
with leaves. in the garden, the sky 
lilted towards sherbet but we didn't bring
any spoons. alas a missed opportunity 
for a headache. our shoes floating
like viking funerals down the creek.
a snake in the grass asking for 
our vascular systems. i wanted so badly
to make a life out of you. carve your face
into a foyer or a vestibule & likewise
you hung your leopard print coat
on my back. in the third chamber
the drought arrive & made all the life
clench. field of fists. the heart itself,
tired from its own animalness.
turned butterfly with waiting. flew
down my throat & then you were gone. 

grenade crates

my father puts the weaponry to sleep.
cradles each bomb & each detonation.
in the basement, he collects war 
like flowers. waters a machine gun 
& stroke the forehead of a missile.
drinks amber beer from a thermos & 
reminisces about never happened. everyone 
is a son every so often. when i stand 
in doorways i am one. i belong
to my father & his beloved destructions.
a hole in the stairwell wall where
he became a puncture. anger is syrupy.
sticks shoes to the kitchen floor.
attracts ants & cockroaches. once,
i bought a single bullet. a secret.
carried it under my tongue safe to my bedroom.
sat it on the windowsill & listened 
to silver hum. my little child waiting 
for me to show him my own threats. 
i couldn't do it. fired him into the ceiling
where he escaped & is now a hot air balloon.
yet still i miss his danger when he
could have inhabited a barrel. when he could have
thrown himself straight ahead. i tell my father
i love him more than anyone else in my family.
he digs the basement wider to have more room
for the weaponry. have you ever been
an arsenal? i fear i will wake up as one.
will see him standing over me, ready 
to make use of my design. when i'm not a son
i shake boyhood off like a dandelion 
losing her face. i crouch in the grass
& converse with the machinery of cicadas.
listen to my father's bones
as he builds another basinett 
for a grenade to sleep in.

canines

our teeth barked all night. spoke to us
of future fires & a need to tie our shoelaces 
to god. mouths closed, we huddled in the closet
hoping to not be discovered. the stars were all teeth
& so were the lamplights. glowing enamel. 
sleeping on the tongue, i dissolved & was 
born again as a toad. toothless, i was briefly
liberated from all thoughts of destruction.
once, we had a t-rex tooth displayed in the living room.
it would growl whenever anyone ate meat. we promised
we would share but the tooth was greedy. 
the first time i kissed a boy our teeth clacked 
like tap shoes. then, he bit my lip & i became
the trout who wants the hook. often, i would
dangle myself from the ceiling by the cheek
or the tongue. even caught myself
generating gills whenever i showered. 
the boy then became nothing more than a diagram 
& i likewise became an example. leaned into 
every reflective surface to check my teeth.
used to crave sharper canines. crawled on all fours
in the hopes it would unhoax my feral. nothing.
nothing at all. rounded gumdrop teeth. 
spitting the sugar out. spitting the sea weed out.
told the teeth to hush. nothing was on fire.
not quit yet. in a decade or so maybe 
but by then we could be so gone. could be
in another planet or solar system. the sun
could have gone home, leaving us 
in the last beautiful dark. it is always worth 
agonizing over the future. by doing so 
we keep it shiny & alive. my teeth knew exactly
what they were doing. barking, yelling, pushing
the inevitable farther away. tonight in my world
there are no fires only a glass door knob
& rows of teeth: patient & eager. 

night vision

i saw you in the fluent green of midnight
with your face a matter of cattails & swamp.
a swing dangled from the ceiling 
& i waited for you to ask me what i did 
with the stars. led them out on leashes
to drink from my mother's face. each of us 
has more than three eyes. the eyes in the cupboard.
the eyes for morning light. the eyes who see
a bruise before it blooms. we are a family 
of watering cans. the tomatoes know
how to get exactly what they want. once,
i let you slice me open just to see how this
could work. crawling on hands & knees
in the dark kitchen where the pots & pans
have no right to be so jovial. we could have been
the whole cylinder. i'm realizing you aren't 
who i thought you were & likewise you're seeing
all my heat. red spreading from my heart
to my face. let's talk about depth & iron.
let's eat crayfish from the water. our hands
fresh & cold as stones. should we speak
of this again? should we call it "legend"
or should we brush the dead leaves over
this old night's face. lay him to rest,
his time like dew collecting. do you trust me
to tell you what i do & don't see? i see 
an elephant in the backyard. i see a neighbor
mowing his lawn at midnight. 
i don't see you at all. 

the invention of waterfalls

in the before times, there was no such thing as plummet.
the water came down from the mountain geometrically: 
triangles & hexagons. swiped from the air by neighborhood children 
& used as rainbow-spitting prisms. the angels spun each shape.
decided on distance & divison. as they worked they named the clouds 
after the children they wished they could have. their long
dewy fingers knitting water into water. no one fell.
not even small children. the ground was made of flurries.
when dishes were dropped they'd just hover before
laying down gently. not all acts of physics are scientific.
in fact none of them all. the downward was something 
angels had considered often, wondering if it might make
less work for them. they took turns testing the new feature,
tossing a rock down a roof-side or spilling glasses of milk.
they delighted in the hurtling. they even tried to fall themselves,
nosediving from their clouds to no avail. they could invent falling
but they could not fall themselves. some wept, wanting so badly
to feel the air open around themselves. others thanked god
for this gift of presence. yes, everything else would drop
& crash, but not us they said. the waterfall was not intentional.
it was a natural consequence of the contagious descension
spreading all over the world. one day an angel went
to knit to water & found it gushing from the mountain's throat.
washed his hands in that deluge & then his face. soaked through
his robes. he laughed. decided not to tell any other angels.
this would be his private plunge. he dreamed all day of it--
water free of angles. water spilling & wild. 

sticker book

you peeled me from my bed neck first.
a finger around my 2 dimensions. we used to 
eat firecrackers in the white-empty. fished
each others glow & adhensive. i was rare 
as a rose in a pear factory. all the production.
pressed into a symbol. you wanted to keep me.
pushed the edges down like furrowed lines.
called me halo or hologram depending 
on the light through the bay window. paging through
my bones. flimsy in the birding. saw the cardinals
turn flat & stagnant & the dinosaurs collapse 
into pictograms. eveything could be made figurine.
everything could be held still. your thumbs 
like rogue pilots flying planes engine-empty.
water churning beneath our feet. old aquifers
disucssing unknowable politics. setting your teeth
one by one on the sink in the bathroom. 
the locker room expanded to hold the whole house.
boys came & stuck themselves to the walls.
the difference between a portrait & a puncture
is a matter of equipment. hold still.
removing one too many from the stove. oven mit.
clothing iron. laying side by side 
on the counter to cool. you & me just little
printed dreams. our edges almost touching.
you closing your eyes the way a feather 
gets lost in a crowded museum.

caress

i wanted you to hear my airplane 
in your bowl of soup. propeller propeller
stirring the sequence. how to be touched
like a licorice rope. jump over 
a ripe stone. our hearts: slimy oranges 
in their sweet rot. the field ready.
the meadow blooming with tiny spoons.
could we really have grazed on each other's
side roads? parking on long island.
the way streets refuse to link elbows.
roar of your race car in the tail-light lullaby.
tell me i'm soft. tell me i'm safe
from all edges. 
supermarket for fingers. open palm. spring of soot.
we walked almost hand in hand until we didn't.
lived icicle graveyards empty &
without mourners. you took the fish hook 
in your mouth. you asked me to pull you along.
tea kettle over eager. unboiled water.
chirping children. midnight illegal fireworks.
thumb in a jar of peanut butter. 
to be touched is to be 
obliterated or maybe i'm just american. 
picking up the pieces is 
my favorite part. oh look my clavical. oh yes
here is one wrist without the other.
"pairs" are a myth. there is always 
a oneness to come back to. when i read tarot 
i'm only looking for one answers
"it is okay." sometimes, when we sleep,
we come apart. lay facing each other
like parallel avenues. 
i am the tree that breaks all the rules. 
reaches an arm across the way.

ocd seimotics 

you are not your face but 
the disappeared in the right mirror.
when did a motion become a function
of the worm's worry? i need hands like
i need water. drinking in fists.
i should have been born a gyroscope.
could have been all kinds of lean.
just wanting please one morning
where the sun calls my name like she once had.
no more legs, just paragraphs & parables.
how do you learn to save yourself?
the trees slipping their feet out of their slippers
& running like wind tunnels. i just want
an easier body. one less box for the eagle.
twin scissors on the staircase making
an arguement for more salt more salt.
blue mold lodged in cheese like crown jewels.
i want to lose everything in this.
throwing the suitecase down the stairs
to have it spill at the bottom.
please i want to be less dire & pressing.
just want to flip the noontime 
like a lily-lever. no more rush
just silt & old stream. 

grounding poem

let's breathe like orchids. i want to be
a castle in the midst of a latest water or else,
drowning, i'd like to have long hair again.
hearing a foot step dragon. where do i belong?
where belongs me? 
my lightning rods turn to pasta. a storm cloud
asks what it should call me. i want the old life--
the one without anything at all. i just laid 
& ate parsnips. i was basically dead.
the air was cold & bruised. i love the way
a wound can remove you from yourself.
standing above you say, "yes that is
my muscle surfacing." a box cutter grow 
under the big pine tree & i asked why it is
we have to decision our way always
into bedroom. the blinds blink themselves away
until i'm just one wide wide window.
i would like to wire my mouth shut. i'd like
chickens in the yard. to wash my hair 
in the jupiter sink. love you without urgency
or detonation. i don't know if i can do that.
my heart is a tomato timer or a pin cushion.
all i know how to do is say, "more more more."
in the before times, we would eat at the food court
& the park bench & the train unspooled us
like maple candy. like an orange, peeling off each lobe
& feeding you. sweet as ice bergs. sharp 
as new boys. i'm standing here
& swaying like a state-of-the-art old tree.