the snakes are ravenous

i watch them swallow a neighbor dog 
& then a trophy & then a school bus tire.
i tug my father's sleeve & tell him
to watch this video of 
a snake devouring a lizard.
we try to snake-proof the house 
with rock music & sad poetry.
dad gets on his knees & peers
at the houses's nonesense spaces.
in one hole in the wall he glimpses
a little video of me as a girl
eating a gummmy snake. 
in another crack he finds
himself as a child dancing with snakes.
ours is a history of this particular repitle
swelling larger & larger in our minds
until now when there's nothing 
we can think of but snakes.
over dinner we say
did you see the snake do this? &
are you afraid 
of the snakes doing that?
in the morning we get up & check
our blankets for snakes 
& our skin for snake bites. 
when i was younger i used to want
to keep them as pets. my father 
encouraged this danger. he bought 
a calliope of jars to house 
said monsters. he taught me
how to lure mice from the fields
to feed future snakes. we were two 
reptile yearners. separately
we both wanted to lose our limbs 
& belly slither into coves
where only snakes can fit. 
out there in the world a snake
is a collaping adjent. they bite
the ankles of joggers & tie knots
around television faces. they ache
like only a needy heart can. 
preparing for love's dangerous
can often take the place of loving.
we found no snakes in the house
& we know we never will.
the searching is the exact addiction
we need. in the trees, snakes are
learning from birds. in the water
snakes are coaxing stories from 
giant squid. it is only a matter of time
before they tell us finally
what we should be doing with our hands.
before one enters the house 
& eats the family from our bones.
my father works in the basement
on a giant wooden snake. i work 
in my bedroom on a snake
made of nothing but need for 
more escapes. i watch a video online
of a giant snake slowly devouring 
larger & larger animals. lizard.
hawk. dog. cat. human. house.
street. siren. radio tower.
there's a theory 
we could already be inside a snake.
i open a window just to hear
the soft snake sounds below.
rustle of a moon. wire fence clink.
a snake is on its way. 

rentable boyfriend

we can take this by the hour 
or by the day. if it's better for you,
decide as you go 
what length you'd like to attempt my body.
consider me a parking meter or a hotel room. 
i'll be whatever kind of temporary you want.
in the city, i drove by a store where you could rent
anything: fridges & beds & folding chairs.
i imagined the brief thrill 
of those pleasures. i am renting
my soul from someone else. it's silky
& at night sometimes dances like a ribbon.
i'm paying by the month. it almost feels mine.
tell me love, what are you borrowing? 
what are you earning?
sometimes i dream of perminance. i look up
houses for sale nearby. page through their photos
knowing i can't render that kind of realness.
i bought a sink & sat it in the hallway
waiting for the water to flow all by itself. 
i'm open to whatever brevities you're craving.
let's eat trees. let's pinch donuts
& fill our throats with powdered sugar.
for the time being i'm whatever you need.
we can walk down to the lake & toss in
our old shoes or just sit on the couch
& stare the television to gold. 
once, i rented myself beautiful 
for a night in april.
a teenager, i knew nothing about how 
increasingly hard it would be to experience 
fixed glimmer. stood on rented mountains.
ate rented words. kissed rented mouths.
the difference was i trusted it all.
cars drove like whales of diamond. 
the boy who rented me paid me in 
fingers & shoulders. how could i
have let myself be chosen so easily?
not again though. now we know 
what we'll be to each other. measurements
of distance. the length of my chest
to yours. a rented door knob 
to a rented heart. tell me please
what kind of palpable are you craving?

singing aloud to my dog

my voice like a frying pan,
round & weighty, grasped by the handle, 
i tell her i used to have 
a more usable tone
made of tin foil & string.
used to sit beside piano benches 
& throat-step notes like stairs
towards a vibrating attic.
like all young girls, i wanted 
to be a singer. wanted to open my mouth
& have a flock of birds emerge 
without warning. 
there were girls in my grade
like that. they had golden jaws
& burned violins in their front lawns.
i didn't bedroom lip sync 
or cry into mirrors. i tried so hard
to melody. swallowed a yellow bird.
slept on other feather pillows.
made sacrifices 
of second-hand flutes &
warped trumpets to the moon.  
still, i sounded the same.
now, like any real boy, my voice
is seldom useful or needed. 
i hum leather shoe fragments.
i scoop the name from songs.
tell me, do i sound like a father
or a front door? tell me,
do you hear the furrow where 
there used to be a strand of long
bowing hair? an opera is lurking
in every gender. mine is about
a snow-wanderer in the midst 
of a wild summer. i'm sure 
you have one too maybe about
a child born as a dog. 
if i had more teeth
i would remove one as a little
trap door for harmony to emerge.
who am i kidding? nothing from my lips
come out alive. once,
i found a very dead bird there.
cradled her to the backyard
to burry her. there i saw
all the pretty young girls
having a chorus without me.
you have to understand how much
this hurt me. my heart turned into 
a pipe organ i don't know
how to play. dear one, thank you
for your audience. for hearing
my mouth for what it is:
a mostly useless dresser drawer 
with a few lullabies left.

b/w

my dog has started painting
on an easel in the living room.
she stays up later than me 
& from my bed i call her saying 
come to sleep, come to sleep.
i used to be like that in high school
night-drunk & eager to write 
bad poems about senseless boys. 
i typed bent over a keyboard in the company 
of lost headlights tracing 
the road our house rested on.
she's done mostly still-lives with a few
portraits of me at my computer.
she sees in black & white so 
her use of color is sporadic & haunting.
today she painted me with green hair
& a pair of burn orange shoes.
yesterday she painted me 
only in white 
with lavender
to outline my features. she sees
something in me other people don't--
how underneath the skin there are
colors burrowed like voles.
she paints a red knife & a brown
mirror. she paints the scrunched face
of a neighbor all cerulian & navy blue.
laps water in between projects 
& coils, exhausted, at my feet.
i tell her she should take a break.
i hold a tennis ball & tilt it playfully
in front of her face. she nudges it away.
she has so much work to do. i can tell.
i buy her new paints & new canvases.
open the blinds when she asks.
feed her treats as she paints & paints: 
catelogging all the miscellaneous items 
on my desk. one night i find her
whimpering over a half-finish painting
done in black & white. it's me again
only this time hovering a half inch 
above my bed. she takes the picture
& run out the back door with it.
suddenly everything brims with 
black & white. the march of grey scales
across our house. i see what she sees.
i scoop handfuls of dark
to try & save her. walk dark wood
& bleating moon until i discover tracks
red with wanting. there she is 
at the end of them--chewing the canvas
to pieces. i carry her home 
like a bundle of color. pet her gently 
at the end of the bed. color returns
over the course of the next week
but all her images remain
black & white. we hang them up
as a relic of her painting days.
now she sleeps & chew raw hide 
& digs holes in the walls. sometimes
i tap her old pictures in the hopes
the color will flicker back.
but it never does.  

re-fathering

the corn maze stole our pelvises
& rattle-snake shook in the pink wind.
i crawled inside. reptiled 
on my belly. tasted the air
with a tea spoon & the atmosphere
was thick as cream. how deep the maze goes
no one is sure. it began one afternoon
with a father who wanted to lose 
his children. he planted & pictured 
& laughed his vertabrae into a maze. 
his children disappeared quickly
as all children do when their father
invents them a beautiful trap. they grew back
as single stalks & their corn 
tasted like metal. they gave up
on retreiving their bones but not me.
i learned to slither.
i learned bathroom tile across my skin
to make scales. tried to stop thinking 
of nightlights & the scruff of mean's beards
as i became smoother & smoother despite
the dirt. in danger, men get rigid
but queers, we polish. i could feel 
my lapis showing & by quartz face.
i talked to the corn children 
thinking they would point me 
towards that bone i craved but 
they had been too long in the labrinth--
too committed to lostness. they turned me
every which way. i trusted only 
a single cloud who nodded when i was
getting closer. landscapes
are mostly un-trustworthy.
the father was my own but he could
have been anyone's you know? all fathers
share that looming. what does it matter
whose father it was & how he grabbed
my hips like a skull? i dug the bone free
with my bare hands. soil under my nails
& the children all hissing & whining.
throwing tandrums because they didn't want
me to leave them to their sorrowing.
i told them that soon enough it would be winter
& they would wither to nothing but necks.
this didn't comfort them but 
you can't comfort the betrayed. oh brothers,
someday i'll return with a fresh father
made of lambs ear & wool. 
until then i know you will go on
baring metal kernals & misguiding 
each stranger sibling who stumbles inside. 
i escaped & the air ripended to red.
i put my pelvis on 
like a skull. 

apple cannon

october smashed into me
with handfuls of jupiter orange
& family in their cockpits.
it rained the afternoon we drove
to shoot apple cannons 
at the fall festival. the corn field
asked our names over & over 
& only i refused to give mine up.
i had multiplying brothers
& a handful of father. i had a leash
to drag a portrait by. the gravel
under my shoes echoed slick with grey.
everyone gathered to shoot.
hurl perfectly beautiful apples 
at faraway targets. load the ripe ammo
into the cannon's mouth. i used to feed
myself like this. one hesitant hand
loading the machine.
my family gathered around, waiting.
mcintosh & red delicious & winesape apples
all going guts for the thrill of it.
the months they swelled 
holding a tree arm delivered them
to our destruction basket. never
hitting target. rogue apples
smacking against a wall of rocks.
skin scuffed clean of their faces.
i took my own fist & considered
squeezing it until it turned red
& almost apple but no. i held on to 
the kick of the cannon. laughter like
leaves dropping hurriedly from children.
we needed the cannon to know us
so we shot more. brothers grew stems 
& mother coiled in a far away pie tin.
i could blame them but it was me
who insisted on still dressing
as a ghost around them. they stopped asking
when are you going to take that off?
& started taking polaroids without me.
apple graveyards. candied apples.
apples weeping their smooth amber seeds 
into the grass, futilly, knowing 
none will take root. the orchard,
like my family, standing tall & still.
worshipping future cannons. 
licking their thumbs clean 
where their apples departed. 

communion 

we slept with donuts on our chests.
jelly & angel cream & old fashioned.
finger-smeared their sweet &
wiped palms on blankets. the moon 
candied herself & we wanted as she 
took a seat in a wooden pew.
we tried so hard to disciple
all across the week. cupped our
cherries & carried them down 
to where other dogs whimpered
at windchimes. sharing food
is a form of severing. here is
what my mouth would have known.
in the church of our sugar no one 
had enough. only the stars shed
their skin. we held tight 
to everything. stapled windows shut. 
locked the cabinets to prevent 
morsels from escaping. spoons 
for forearm bones, we prayed
by opening wide as we could. let him
see all the years of eating 
we'd contained. there's a lot you can learn
by peering down a throat :
how did this person survive their februaries?
what can they certainly not live without?
for me its the donuts. i prefer powdered.
all the remnants they leave. 
white foot prints 
leading down into my pulpit.
i can't sleep with all the chewing
but i can at least join in. on the sidewalk
glass red horses are on their way 
to be sucked on & lollipops wink 
innapropriately at every passerby. 
it didn't always used to be like this.
sometimes, we used to settle down
& just bite celery for a week or two.
not anymore. not anymore. god said
the way to salvation is through 
pleasure. then he just laughed
& returned to his restaurant 
at the impossible part of town. 
we hope he will come munch with us
one night. i leave donuts 
on my windowsill. i dream i'll glimpse
his hand reaching 
& grasping one tight. then
*chewing noises*

keeping

i found magazine shreds 
in the tall grass field 
by the dentist's office
on the first day i moved back 
to my parent's house. 
it was lightly raining
& the pages stuck to my fingers 
as i knelt to pluck them. red truck 
rushed past then a parade of black cars.
everyone was carrying a funeral 
inside their chest where a bird
used to be. my hair was longer
than i had ever imagined
& i tucked strand behind my ear
over & over. april knew nothing
about me. i peered at the fragments
as i harvested them. did not
try to rationalize the action 
as by this point i knew very little
about what my hands wanted. 
collected every piece i could
& departed up the hill 
on noble street. stole thick coffee
from mom's pot & slipped
into my childhood bedroom still tinged
with previous dusts & fingernails. 
i sat on the speckled carpet
to arrange the pieces. there had to be
a picture to be found. afterall,
this was about discovery. about
prying open the old town & finding
a radical face to clutch me.
over & over i wonder: how how how. 
downstairs mom watched the news until
the living room felt like an ambulance.
none of us left. we said virus prayers.
the fragments left no conclusions.
one bare leg. one lip. a tan ankle.
maybe the curve of a back then 
rain droplets & warped wanting.
i googled the last three letters
of the dismantled title & found
a porn magazine. girls on their knees.
men groveling & begging. a ball gag.
a pink bikini. tired imagine what it meant
for someone to ravage their once-desires.
i prefer to think of them crouched,
like i was, on the side of the road
as cars rush past saying
"no more of this, the world is ending."
i am not sure why i keep them
but it felt wrong to dispose of. maybe
they feel like evidence we are still
alive, maybe i want to be a picture
undone by a man on the side of the road. 
want someone to piece me together
& keep me despite my lack of cohesion.
my favorite piece is one of just 
a smokey mascaraed eye & slight bridge 
of a nose. her face is somewhere. 

breaking out into feathers 

the roadkill on noble street is reliable.
always one by the bottom of the hill
& one near the parker's drive way & another
deposited by commonwealth road.  
i'd hold mini funerals in my head
as i'd walk past squirrels & rabbits 
& the occasional folded bird on my way
to middle school. saying to myself, 
"i bet they thought they were headed 
towards more green."
saying, "i wish i could burry you."
i tried once. this one particular bird 
with its wings splayed out as if 
statued in mid-flight. hints of iridecense 
made dawn light echo in her feathers.
i'd stolen a ziploc bag from the cupboard
& thought i could use it to lift the bird 
at least into the nearby field.
i knelt down & couldn't do it. not because
the body replused me but because
the bird stared into me & saw my bones
with what was left of her bold black eyes. 
i knew what it was like for her to perch
& flock & flush.
i thought she'd start thrashing 
if i grasped her.
come alive & refuse to be buried. i gave up though 
& left her there. watched slowly
as she turned from feather to meat 
to bone. i learned too much from those creatures.
found morning and mourning to be closer
than they seemed. how daybreak
comes to remind us of our bodies
& their sequences. all my short funerals
i attended in secret. walking over 
& over. when i visit my parent's house
i still amble the same path each morning. i am
a scheme of habits & re-memories. 
there's no sidewalk on noble street 
& sometimes the cars drive too close. 
yesterday a truck's side grazed my shoulder 
& i could have sworn
i broke out in feathers. my heart
quick as a bird's as i watched the tail lights 
dissapear into the corn fields. 
all these animals are still resting 
in me. how have i become a catacomb 
for brief lives. 

balance

like an angel, a white tern 
visits my wooden kitchen room 
& makes a tree of me.
they're known for laying eggs
right on tree branches. no nest at all.
i used to climb trees as a kid. i was
smooth & as unknowingly fragile
as an egg. the sun made a sitting room
of my heart. sometimes i fell 
& took a piece of sky down with me.
hid the fragment from all my friends 
& soon lovers. the shards always dissolved
leaving little white stains 
wherever they had laid. the white tern waits 
till i'm standing at the kitchen counter
& looking out the back window at
the piling snow. again, i'm washing 
the same plate. again, i'm considering
which bowl to scrape with one of two spoons. 
living alone in february leads to echos,
faint pulses of waiting for ancienct greens.
one egg deposited on my collar bone. 
another on my nose & a final right 
at the crown of my head. future birds.
i thank the white tern for flying
all the way from the tropics just 
to teach me how to balance. how to lay
a life in skin-bone crease like i used to
when the world had more beds & more aching.
when they hatch i will be a mother.
hopefully not a father. by then maybe
the snow will have melted & i can sit 
on my porch & tell them everything i can
about flight. until then, i can be still.
their little impending wings wink at me.
i ask the white tern not to leave 
but she must. leaves one feather 
on the sill before departing,
smeared into the white glowing snow.