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. 

we left the disco ball out in the rain

glimmer spored & planted sway 
all over the dew-spat yard. 
the house we stood in front of
was not ours & it glitched 
when one of us wasn't looking.
pruney fingers tried to untangle 
knots of hair. tree pasting leaves
across skin. map gutter crumpled 
& trading roads for red vines.
our festive clothes were ruined
by our own calliope. damp 
as a drained dream. teeth chattering
with a cold rush in from the west.
plucked ripe sweaters from a bush.
itchy & knitted by elderly angels.
how could you go to sleep like this?
all the unfinished ruffle & 
the mouths we still needed 
to enter? gone we make a statue
of you to remember what we forgot.
your arms crossed we make you 
out to be a good father instead
of a passing spine. priests 
will survey this mess & deam us
unworthy of feed bags. the disco ball
swelled. you should have seen it.
you should have wrapped the towel
clockwise around the wound. 
blood is a kind of egg timer.
the bread is done. the bread's been done.
all i need is the right insulated glove.
we should seek shelter
in the nearest dead car. a skeleton
is always a little human. 
shining flecks of leftover. 
i fill my pockets & i get greedier
by the moment. i'm sorry i would
keep it all for myself if i could.
would pour others recollections out
& jar them for new camera angles.
i wasted my tokens on a train
to the drug store. they were
out of marshmallows. can i borrow
a rain coat? the sweater
is reminding me of sheep standing
like enemy-less soldiers
field-standing & ready.
we depart but i still want
to reassemble the thing. find every
fleck & freckle & re populate
the ground with future suns.
it's no use. we wasted the last circle.
now it's just rough around edges 
all the way to the end. 
keep a piece for yourself. 

bread clip

we collected. held plastic between
thumb & finger. determined to build
disposal. aquariumed & swimming,
all the plastic in their paradise
to look at with hopscotch-eyes.
counting. where does the number go
once it's passed in its place.
a valley of sevens for the keeping.
breadclips are not recyclable 
in the blue sense but yes in 
the way that anything can be used 
for inspiration if you put it
in a cage. darting plastic. winking
plastic. we visited the plastic 
to ask our fortunes. i took 
my dandelion skulls to the morgue 
for an autopsy. death by thumb.
when the ocean is oil i'll go there
& make the evolved & ugly fish 
how to breath fire precipices. 
until then we have to ask containers.
the hallway. the shelf. the sink.
the pocket. hung a bread clip 
on my earlob & started hearing
ancient plant-matter talking about
unionizing. i don't explain it's
a little too late, i just listen.
hearing used to be my antidote 
but one day it just turned
stale & the crust peeled free 
as feathers. there's enough rations
to last this flag pole or so they said.
we stole some & stuck them
in our back pockets where all secrets live.
traded colors. blue being rare.
blue being sacred. the sky having
long been replaced 
with a late-night show set.
i keep a blue till this day.
no you can't see it. 
when you share a color 
a bit of the wave length is lost.
i need all i can get. we released
the breadclips in to their 
natural habitat. a million.
a million. the mud river.
trees, who knows which are root
& which have long been 
men in costumes with 
sound recording devices?

mopping

never learned the propper technique.
at the malt shoppe 
the red & white checker board floor
caught ice cream smear & scuff.
i loved working there because it felt like
acting-- i would imagine a young girl i could be.
simple black heels. picnic table print dress. 
red lips. mind gathered cloud-like in tulle.
but, by closing time, that game would fade 
& i would want desperately to escape
my uncanny dinner-plate face 
reflected back at me 
in the ice cream freezer window. 
one college girl i worked with said, "like this"
& she'd rub the mop 
in circles across the ground, 
dragging the bucket behind her 
like a tired dog. she'd stack her tips
in adjacent piles. i always thought
they looked like row homes.
another boy told me 
i rung the mop too much. instead,
his mop slopped on the floor like
spilled chilli. he left puddles behind
&, while he took apart the soft serve machine,
i'd go back over the mess he'd made
using a dry mop. what is being a girl 
but always trying rectrify? once, i closed up
with the owner. a bald older man.
he watched me while i mopped & corrected me 
as i went. he said, "ring it out more."
"squeeze it harder." "no softer."
"you have to press down." i did 
everything he said. we had closed later
after a rush of post baseball game players.
finished, i walked home up the street
towards my parents house. moved 
in circles. in the shower, scrubbed
cream from under nails. a check board 
unfurling in my heart. skipping
white spaces. perched on red. 
dragging the bucket.

culpability 

i blame the moon for shifting.
wearing manhole cover like mask.
the tide rose last night & lifted me
from my clothes. dough wandering for oven.
i blame the night for leaving me
moth-eyed & eager. i blame the sun
for siphoning color. he fills jars
with bruises & noses. i track the moon
on an app. the app alerts me when
the moon might come down & cut
all the buttons from my clothes
or might press a dream of you 
into my head. i'm not hungry at all
it's just the waxing. inhereitable swell.
take my shoes off & fill them with rocks 
so they won't float. rise my mouth out
with salt. read the tea leaves
that say exactly what i knew they would:
he is not the lover you want him to be.
so i re-arrange them to say: you are not
the lover you want to be. if it is my fault
then there's less to mourn.
the moon is known to gnaw telephone wires
during tense conversations but sadly
now most of us talk through satelittes.
i'm blaming the moon for how long it takes
to stretch from one year to the next.
this time last year i brought each planet 
a flower each night in the hope that one
would take pity on me & make me a moon.
all i really want is to move water. to glow
in a non-threatening way. to play i spy 
with the distant dirt. kiss a boy
in the dark who thinks nothing
of celesitial alignments. we all cried
last sunday as venus entered pisces.
it's just a sea shell you know? the moon
used to be worn by a creature before
it got all bold & glorious. if she can do that
i can certainly move on. my heart is full
of water. i don't want to be an ocean.
i want to be a creature whose body
runs on glass or sand or even just soil.
anything but all this tug. water damage 
from the sea. kelp clutter in the bathroom.
moon taking a bath. kneeling down
to grandmother-clean her. darling 
it is alright. do what you want with me.  

antelope 

we stared nature documentaries
all early pandemic. screen glow 
a sever in the wall. leaving soon.
everyone would be leaving soon. 
you pleaded with me to turn on
anything else. stubborn & sick,
i lied & said i found the documentaries comforting
but mostly, i just wanted to disperse my body
& this tactic was working.
arctic & ocean & hyenas bright night-vision eyes.
ever since i was small i've hoped to be 
any other animal. washed my hands 
& asked to come away with hooves. 
this is of course a great romantization.
through video i saw how 
anxiety urges an umbrella bird
to change branches. my heart 
in any body would find its same fears
would worry about swallowing. 
sharks never sleep. jelly fish thought
is so much more complex than our own 
we say they have no brain. i saw jellyfish 
& knew they were dreaming of utopias.
antelope stand only a few seconds after they're born.
i pictured us this certain. standing 
in the dry tall grass. knees ready.
you & me, we were not antelope
or even tigers or even red tail hawks.
we were skin wrapped like a flag 
around bone. i couldn't pry you open
& you didn't know me anymore. or was it
the other way around? in the shower
i clenched as clam or mussel. you knocked
on the door & made me human. at the time,
i hated you for it. was i really close
to antelope or was i fooling myself?
sometimes i still hope 
for another species to sweep me off my future.
give me seal or blue ring octopus.
when a siren beat its wings against window
we'd pause the show. i'd say "i love you"
& i'd mean "i'm trying to save myself." 

dimensions

my dad asks for the dimensions 
of my body so he can build a coffin
or a cabinet. i can't remember which.
i lay down & ask you to draw a line
from my ankle to my skull
then jump rope with it. on my best days
i fit nicely on a sheet of printer paper.
pin me to your favorite telephone poll
or fold me into paper airplane. 
still, on wide august night i can swell
to the size of a garage. wait out
next to my father's ghost jeep
& talk about girth & thickness.
in another dimension, i was born
a sunflower seed & i lived very briefly 
in a hardware store package. 
no one bought me & i slept better
than i ever will here. i'm not sad
about having a body, i'm sad about
all the ways it's prone to measuring.
step on the scale, a nurse says
& all of a sudden she owns a handful
of my numbers. i want to swipe them
back from her & say, "my dad is 
the only one who can know that
because he is building a vessel." 
his actions are similar to noah 
building an arch only i am only
one animal. likely never two. two by two
is a very small square if we're talking inches
but could be a fair window 
if we're talking feet. i don't need
a tape measure to know the snake
in the basement is a leg. 
hammer to wood. i gave my dad 
imaginary number knowing i'll never fit.
he's eager. what is a child but
a project in containment.
i take my heart to the washing machine
because i want it to smell fresh & clean.
ring it out in the yard. a song bird
the size of a couch darts away.
basement door open. i measure 
the size of the yard & picture shoes 
filling every inch of it.
shrinking & shrinking. i feel proud.
tuck myself in a desk drawer.
wait for the numbers to sleep too.
a seven curled up next to a three.
me in between, most closely resembling
a nine but often, sadly, a four. 

prophecies 

the knobs fall of my parent's cabinets
one by one like silver hearts
or empty dove eggs. naturally,
i am the son to harvest them.
fill my pockets. weighty little wrists.
the cabinets ask me to fix them 
& when i'm feeling generous i oblige.
screw the handle into thread bare hole 
& open to find whatever menagerie awaits.
once, i pulled up a chair to watch
a circus of moths teach each other
to waltz in the remnants of our flour.
another night i witnessed a rat
playing harmonica for a lost lover.
every cabinet is its own secret little show.
even the empty ones yield prophecies
if you stick you head inside
& close your eyes. 
hunger is a full-body memory. 
an opening that doesn't seal shut
even when humming with dried apricots.
when i eat from the cabinets
i feel like i'm throwing
sand into a suitcase. gaping each door
to ask crumbs if they remember
my searching as a child. ask
if they can assemble themselves
into a sitting room or a sanctuary.
once, i opened a cabinet & found
a mirror that would not hold
my reflection. how much had i thinned?
even light had no questions for me.
i asked my own what color 
are my eyes? no answer: refraction.
it is better tonight thogh. 
the cabinet feeds me
a television show about climate change
& i suck on the knob like a pearl.
something in the oven is going 
to be ready soon. i can feel the heat
in my skeleton. i'm goin
to eat with my fingers when 
there's no one else to see. 
i'm going to slip inside 
a cabinet door myself. 
become a picture-show or 
a package of dried milk.  

several kinds of alarm 

in the before times there were no sirens,
only birds trained by a monk 
in the courtyard where weeds grew
like children. he would bend down
& whisper horrors in their ears
to make them scream. a separate 
atrocity for each creature to spit
back out in sound. in the city,
we knew the sirens as women. great bodies
scrambling through the streets.
what does it sound like to search for
a child in the wild tall grass
& come up empty? 
we were both rooted for & ultimately 
unfound. slung our shoes over
a telephone wire. someone is calling home.
someone is calling you "darling."
sirens with the stoplight 
in the back of their throats.
i would count them as they passed.
cover my face. no. i'm not who
you're looking for. a tape recorder
in the living room taking inventory.
the loudest siren always rushed
from left to right. then, the ambient one
whose direction even she was unsure of.
as a child in the play yard i said prayers
for sirens. one hail mary. let all bodies
be whole. jars for screaming.
the birds in the courtyard. the monk
with a leather notebook for inventing 
terrors to give the birds. weeping,
he wants to tell the birds beautiful things only.
imagines saying, "i am in love
with another man." but instead swallows
that urgency. the birds are neccesary tools.
who else will be the warning if not them?
a bird landed on my windowsill
& shouted orange & red. i covered my ears.
i am skilled at ignoring emergency. i don't
even have a window or a windowsill.
the monk is walking out & nodding
at dandelions. the birds are gathering.