mcmansion 

by which i mean we lived 
inside a hot tub & worried about
the potential for pregnancy 
or patchy alternate realities.
put our hands over jet streams 
& downloaded our favorite music
right into our skulls. 
i didn't know what you were listening to.
everything was completrely private
behind lovely picket fences.
fences are expensive or was it
expansive. i love a nice division.
here is your arm & here is mine
& here is the polaroid we took 
to commemorate buying realestate 
on the moon. then the water gets warmer.
not global-warming heat but like
kissing-too-much heat. it's harder to breathe
each day. i want nothing to do with
tree planting. all my trees arrived 
like children. two-day shipping.
who needs dirt. washing my hands 
in the water. my leg becomes your leg
& i say, "hey give it back."
in the oven our premaid soccer game
is waiting like an enterprise.
i'd really love to float on my back
but looking directly up at the sky
makes it prone to glitching.
i can do without an existencial crisis 
for at least the next month.
don't have time i nthe schedule.
putting a reminder on my phone
to kiss you before
all the water evaporates 
& we have to ask the well 
what it thinks of our hair.
whose lawn is purring again? which car
is offering to drive any one in need
to the nearest cliff for irrevocable diving.
i'm trying to just take in the moment.
my therapist in the microwave says
i can't have it all so i shut the door
& tell her to calm calm down
it's not that serious. it's just a house.
i'm just a house. 

over

the children gather like
swans. necks loose & garden hose.
swing set at the edge of the park
where all the bicycle go 
to decay. one is telling others
"i can swing myself over the bar"
& everyone wants to see her do it.
the children is me. no just the girl
but also the boys with ill-fitting shirts
& another girl who watches
from the furtherest distance.
legs pumping like oil rigs.
up the street construction workers
break open the asphalt in a secret search
for gold. a parakeet whistles 
as brownies burn in the oven
of kitchen of the house next to the park.
the world is missing a beat. 
she kicks at the air. images 
knocking the faces off trees.
clouds reform to be less severe.
the children watch for hours
but become very bored. they wanted 
to see the over--the moment the swing
& the girl's body finally whip
around the tall bar. no luck no luck.
the girl powers the whole town
with her efforts. the world could run
on "over." i tell all my children
to find something else to occupy themselves
but the watching is contagious
& i find myself more & more staring.
handfuls of mulch. an abandoned lawn mower.
what we really need is not a lower swing
but a higher swing. the more impossible
the better. swing scraping
the moon. oh little girl self
i'm sorry to leave you there
trying to get over. i'm trying
to get over too. take me with you
on the way down only. children 
fall asleep standing up 
like horses. the moon up & leaves.
this is mostly all my fault.
eventually it happens. she wraps the swing
round the bar but no one is 
mentally present enough to notice. 
it's unfortunate. she probably won't
do it again. i tell my children parts
to go home & try to invent good parents
& leave the park alone for a few weeks
before things are settled & gone. 

numerology

balloons tied themselves 
to every single eye lash. i blinked
louder than jupiter & angerier 
than a shattered porch light.
laying on the sofa you counted
the hairs on my head & then
you asked me if i could see 
the angel-monsters sewing 
each second into place. i lied
& said i did. you were always
the mystic one with your 
ouija board fingers & your oracle
in the closet telling us
when we might die. you have a ritual
of only asking once a year
& you said to ask about your own death 
more than that was a sign of insanity.
did you know i went to question
every single night? each time
the throat gave me a new number.
month. day. year. i wrote them down
on scraps of toilet paper & notecards
& sometimes, on the backs of my hands.
how could it change so much? five years away
sixty years away. eight days away. 
i swam with numbers. laid down
in your whirling cast circles.
burned mugwort for peace. you held up
a tiny crystal ball & said
whenever you looked in it,
you only saw my face. i saw nothig
but blur. began to only trust numbers.
fixed & final. slept inside sevens
& made sure to kiss each day in even numbers.
hauling my body then to your oracle
& asking with trepedation
"do you know when i will die?"
you see i was not afraid of death
but worried i only had so much longer 
with you. yet, still, i wanted to be sure
to die first. i would not be lonely
with my numbers. did you truely 
never discover my habit? 
do you still have the oracle?
can i see it just once more.
i want a new number round
& etchable. i want to carve it.
mother it. hold it to its word. 

playland

the end times are for hamburgers
& brothers. we parked the car 
in lava & watched it melt like cheese.
brother the size of pea in our pockets.
he cried for french fries
so we ordered some without any salt.
took refuge in the molten plastic.
plumetted the red slide
& mashed in the ball pit like 
basketed tomatoes. 
there are no instructions 
for becoming an eldest brother.
you look at your hands & noticed
they are smaller than all your brothers
so you take them off & send them
to play with legos in purgatory.
enough ketchup to believe in blood again.
no wifi signal, just the mcdonalds clown
shouting news headlines at the top
of his lungs. what i wouldn't give
to be a mascot instead of boy-mother.
wash our hands in a slit cloud.
our shoes float off 
on a torrent of lime soda.
how were we supposed to keep
night from falling. then, curb-sitting
& counting loose stars.
is that your son? 
no that's my brother, he's
limited edition. take off
his detachable sadness & 
put it in the glove box.
we drive home through helpeless highways
still munching on this & that.
brother please stop crying, i hope
quietly to myself. guilt is 
the needle sewing each hair
into my head. a gust of wind
is a gentle repreieve. everything smells
like tatter-tots & processed patties.
feeding my brother from 
the palm of my hand. little animal.
i promise to guard him even if 
he only gets smaller. despite
the lateness of the moon
& despite the lack of honey mustard.
driving we pass playland 
after playland & he begs
to stop at each so i do. 
red slide. blue slide. tic tac toe. 
bare feet to sidewalk.
headlights spilling & ravenous.
we will be home soon
i promise him. he kisses 
my thumb. 
 

my burger king toy

was a tall man with a buttery nose
& sea horse eyes. 
didn't fit inside the reccomended plastic.
told him to lay down in the back seat
& cover his ears while i chew.
i try to avoid processed boys
but sometimes it's inevitable.
in dusk i always float like a pickle. 
blimping & goose flesh. nothing much to see.
it's better not to resist this kind of coupling.
on the way home, i got him a fine china plate 
he can carry around to feel important.
really, i wanted the wooden top.
wooden toys make me believe
we were once cut from trees or at least
that we were once more organic. 
trees faint when you tell them
just how much waste is happening 
right now. the consumer is always
thinking he-she knows what he-she wants.
when i am in a consuming mood
i watch youtube until the videos
mash together & no longer make any sense.
plastic is basically organic though
like tomatos or beets. used to be
dinosaur brains & now is smooth 
& blue. science is sometimes
nothing more than instructions 
for how to make the best soda lid.
my toy asks for chipped ice
but i only have cubes. he doens't appreciate
how many stop lights i had to endure
to meet him. the fries 
are cold as tombstone letters.
when we go to sleep i'll tie a balloon
to his wrist & tell him "get lost."
not like in a rude way but more like
a "not all who wander are lost" bumper sticker.
really, my preference is for 
men the size of pockets. i pat his head.
i fold the hashbrown in half 
like a bible to take a bite. 
tell him he tried his best.
nothing free is neccesary. well,
except maybe air. but even that 
might be up for debate. i once
held my breath for twenty-one years 
& nothing that bad happened to me. 

rapid onset gender 

the needle was a mother closet.
brushed my teeth with salt.
ate ice cream in the fire elevator.
knotting my heart like a pair of socks,
i don't take mondays for granted.
i pull them taffy-like from 
underneath a fresh lid. milk the moon
for nourishment. turn up the heat 
in the bathroom to sweat myself
free of all my hair. thighs are
the most important muscles & 
here i am with not one but two.
brotherhood on a coat hanger.
spit spikes in the sink from
the impending collar. 
i'll walk on all fours
if you hold the leash. beard blooms
like daffodil & blue bonnet.
i'm making a thicket of my face.
attaching burs to your back.
i want to be the lover who is 
hard to take off who years later
you wonder "where are they?"
my pronouns are very worn out 
so i wash them in the sink 
with orange dishsoap. i have a hard time 
correcting people when they call me
a prophet. i just saw god's ankles 
underneath the dressing room door.
i'm making a bumper sticket that reads
"supernatural = natural." nothing much else
to say about transformation other than that
it should be more hourglass flip
& less medical waste. though not my fault 
everything blue needs to blink 
itself awake. praise my scabby elbows.
praise the shed snake skin in the sink.
wasn't mine wasn't mine. purse me
to the graveyard water fountain.
let's talk about the gender of a knuckle.
mine is amethyst beneath the skin.
i'm having all my bones surgicall replaced
with crystals as fast as i can.
bones are really too heavy for this
kind of lift off. fill my shoes with dirt.
plant tomatoes. red comes so fast 
i can barely catch.

come on eileen

between wracks of overalls & ratty coats
in the flatbush thrift store 
we talk about our future apartment 
that will never arrive. 
but we don't know that yet, we're eager.
we're swaying to come on eileen playing
over the store loud speaker. 
am i wondering if we're in love or am i just
sifting through our bodies like parking lots?
i need a winter coat 
even though the sun on the asphalt 
suggests the potential for spring.
what a january can do to you. 
with this constant blushing.
dandelions gossiping underneath the sidewalk.
holding hands & releasing them.
your knuckles like knots in a wooden door. 
you show me three two bedrooms on your phone 
& each building we pass seems like
it might hold a future bedroom. 
christmas lights wrapped around 
a lamp post. a boy on a stoop playing
a slightly out of tune acoustic guitar.
i can still hear come on eileen 
from the thirft store speaker up the street.
we're looking for another stop 
& another. being in the city is frantic.
always feels like we're missing so much 
we're missing so much. i used to think the song was 
about the singer trying to get eileen 
to come to bed with him but 
in between buildings with you 
the song was about time. how you can try
to pull forward. you can try to push over
a month or two. come on come on.
we are far too young & clever. 
but it never arrives any smoother.
my new coat had a hole in the left pocket
but for then i thought it was perfect.
stood on the subway platform with you
as you told me you had found
another apartment & another. 
i decorated my heart 
with our impending windows.
Come on Eileen, 
oh I swear what he means.

tell me someday about plastic bags.
about where you took your legs
that night after we got home. 
does it matter if i loved you 
or if i needed you? At this moment, 
you mean everything.
 

narrowing 

by nightfall, buildings were as thin as string beans.
i took your hand & pulled you through
our favorite wreckage. funny how 
every little destruction can be
coated in bronze & saved for future fingers.
dead trains shook like hampsters in their holes.
we needed a method of transportation
so, by flashlight, we made the teleporter
we'd always talked about. gum & dimes &
a little stage to crouch on. i asked
where you thought you were going & you shrugged
& said you'd let the trade winds decide.
every body might as well be a molecule boat.
press a button. gone you were. absense expanding
were your bones used to vibrate the air. 
the river had been toxic for a long time 
but in the dark then without you 
it glowed a new green. i dipped my feet
to watch them swim free. two pulsing golfish.
thinner still, the towers were wide as tooth picks
& people still managed to clock in. swipe cards.
slink into breath-sized room. i ran my fingers 
across the walls like bars then strings.
a city is a strummable thing. thumb 
to window. you were so far away. 
i couold tell you put a latitude
in your heart & spun with it. why hadn't i 
asked to leave first. then again,
i think i feared the techology. 
it's possible you didn't teleport anywhere,
just dispersed like a blown dandelion skull. 
there was only one way out. a tunnel
the width of a pinky. i sucked in.
surprised myself with how much i had 
to be drawn closer. in a past life maybe
i was a corset maker or a may pole weaver.
once out the girth of structures terrified me.
so much room. everyone was a bay window.
no sign of you anywhere. the device
winking in an alley elsewhere. 
the city then behind me, 
a single coarse string dangling 
from a cloud. waiting to be pulled.

patterns on men's shirts

i'll be blunt, 
it was all for blue floral
& forget-me-pleases. 
skipping buttons in the river.
your shirt opening like eyelids.
i can see your heart made, 
like a bird's nest,
of dismantled dawn. 
polka dots ride your spine.
we drove the car 
into a manhood monument
& hoped the impact might solidfy
our cause. i first learned 
of undone in the back of your car
where all the repetition is stored.
tell the paisley to come back
& get comfortable. 
perching our shirts 
on coat hangers
they make little half-men
who want nothing but 
to leg themselves across
the highway. i always 
line the holes up wrong.
lopsided blinking. 
zipper eyelashes. here comes
the returning stone 
to knock on a back door.
how did you get in
& how long do you plan to stay?
i'm asking you with your thumbs
gyroscoping us steady in reality.
soon i'll fly off &
not worry if the flowers
have names or not but for now
i'd like to know where 
to find a men's dressing room
this late at night.
i need a full-length mirror
& a bench & a price tag
to clip to my ear. we used to
close all the doors in the house
before we kissed. kitchen 
closet coat room. then here
we went asking each button
if it wanted to flick its wrist.
turn open the light
like an iris. button
my eyes shut. i want to walk 
in this marking. 
the ornament repeated
is my idenity. here i am
dressed for you. 

teen spirit 

we smell pink tonight
in our bedroom with our
dollar store deodorants
& cheap flip flops. i love my friends
in twist-tie ways. braid & unbraid 
bra straps like ladders. a chest
is a kind of skull. we eat
sugar from a bag using mis-matched spoons.
a television becomes a girlfriend
& briefly so do i. i consider
toes like tulip bulbs. want to
ask if anyone needs to be kissed.
let the pillows fill with leg hair.
a razor on a windowsill. back swear.
tired socks & shed feathers.
smudging nail polish on carpet.
we ponder july & pool water 
& boxers. shoot hair ties
at mars who is too visible.
exchange tips for talking to boys.
i go to the bathroom & try to 
wash my hands in a way that might
clean my whole body. put lotion
behind my ear because i saw it 
in a movie once. all my girlhood
is imitation. how a mirror 
asks the same question backwards:
are you sure? vs. you are sure?
most of us want to be something
we are not. it's about how wide
the distances grew while we're
no looking. applying more deodorant.
pink cap. pink gums. brushing teeth.
our spit in the same sink. 
i'm going to be first 
to fall asleep. 
i can already feel it.