father working 

we all take plates 
& pile them with meat: lamb, turkey,
alligator, moon, stirrup.
father in his hollow whittling
down the ache. all alone 
he does what he has to keep
all of us tip-toeing. brings the elbows 
to the end. swings his real axe 
at the head of every tuesday.
outside we gather what we can.
keep him fed like good sons.
kill earwigs & ethers. harvest
lightbulbs for their eyelashes. 
in the meantime, while father hunches,
practice our beards in the mirror
then shave them off so he knows
we aren't serious about being men. 
sweep his cicada shells
from the entrance. he lives
in a great dig. earth mouth-gaping.
we spit our spare teeth into the trash.
inspect each other's violets
for blight. winter is coming &
father will soon want more from us:
songs & lit candles & promises.
he will loom with his bottle-cap eyes
& arms out stretched as if 
wanting an embrace 
but really just saying 
"hand everything over." we prepare
baskets of glass jars
& stuffed animals. hear his fingers
crackle before he works
the earth's core. pulling & pressing
on the heat. finding lumps 
of delight & rolling them up
for later. the end times
are asking for our lips.
at night all the doors lock themselves
& we lay down like dolls
in the living room. father eats 
his way through the dark.
sometimes i wish i could be father.
i take a kitchen knife & consider
digging my own hole to crawl into.
i ask in my head for a sign
or a son but always 
talk myself out of it. 
instead, find another trinket
to deliver to him. a shoe.
a sliver. a basket of wild onions.
keep your eyes closed.
he's trying to watch the game. 

pick-up truck

let's cut down tree together
& divy up logs between us.
i'll take your neck if you take mine.
the fireplace is hungry 
for a lock of your hair so i stole it
& i hope that's okay. 
you smell like smoke & mint.
cradle is always widening.
will you rattle your ribs with me?
let's work together & check
for bats. who wants to be a farmer 
in their next life? i would like
to drive a red pick-up truck
& sing to bears in the backyard.
i would like to drive the truck
up a mountain with the bed full
of apples ready to spend them 
on the right moon. people would ask
to borrow my pick-up truck 
& i would always lend it to them.
i would tell them to drive 
as far as they could without stopping.
&, months later, they would arrvie
with the truck & a sack of feathers
to repay me (though i'd accept no payment).
truck & i growing old 
in a mountain town. i would keep
my manhood tucked inside 
a little leather notebook. 
taking it out only on rare nights
when i'd need my sturdy face
for scaring ghosts away 
from the edge of the woods. 
some of them would crawl, following me
for a ghost supper in the kitchen at midnight.
empty bowls & empty plates & empty forks.
each enjoying their favorite meal.
they'd praise my truck & dream 
of their own travels. i'd take
many night drives. yellow headlights
painting torsos gold. sleeping 
in the back bed & letting the stars 
bore holes in my skin 
until i was (thankfully) a ghost.
i want to take you far away from here.
we should eat spring onions
dug from dirt. boil some dead leaves
for supper. split a fork between us.
you can have the prongs & i'll
take the stem. engine sputters.
engine asks for a spoonful of sun
or kiss of a true love.
can you hear it all the way
in my next life? tell me, 
what's happening in yours.
do i hear rain or is that a school
of fish? cradle asking for 
another quarter. i'll pay this time. 

wedding

my cousins are getting married.
i want to emulate the glaciers:
be dramatic with my ceremonies.
melt in the most complete ways possible.
they are looking for a venue
& searching for the right bite 
of earth. a cake grows
in their bath tub. i everyday
& everymorning over & over.
with the same wifely spoon
i swallow a bowl of water.
a veil sprouts from her forehead
& in the mirror each morning
she snips it with garden shears.
tossing it in the bathrooms 
private trashcan. 
everyone i know is getting married.
engagement rings roll down main street.
children are catching them
& giving them to crushes & goldfish.
weddings by the creeks. weddings 
from the branches of birch trees.
weddings in the dead of night
with no witnesses. i find my own
in a snail shell uncoaxable. 
i whisper to the little moment 
in the hopes he'll unfurl 
& tell me something brief & beautiful.
i need a wedding this week
& another one to look forward to 
in the next few months. my cousins 
are younger than me. they have
a wedding registry. they have 
preferred fine china. they are asking
for sets of wine glasses. 
i turn the faucet & red wine
spills out. please, i don't want
to celebrate anything. not until. 
not until. i don't know what do
with my fingers. i wrap them
in twist-ties. put the snail shell
in a tupperware container 
to keep the wedding fresh for when
it's ready. once i had one.
glossy & short. a small service.
just me & the first snow in early december.
come back come back. wait for me.
my cousins kiss each other 
like goldfish. i sleep standing up. 

several examinations

i got an x-ray to look for my sadness.
there was no doctor or machine,
just me & a spool of radiation.
found three thumb tacs in my throat
& a migrating bottle cap but nothing else.
i bought a tunnel & a horseshoe 
& a pile of needles. i sold
a trapzee & a goldfish & a fishing rod.
next summer i am determined 
to drown in the ocean by accident
or at least sever a mountain in half.
they'll pull my body from the water
& perform a quick autopsy at which
they'll discover my sex.
i found my happiness in an envelop once.
i laughed so hard it turned into 
a pigeon & ran off. 
i said "please come back."
i'm sick of asking people
"how are you?" because i cannot begin
to begin. in it's place i'm suggesting 
asking, "what is horrifying you lately?"
i'm scared of driving my car
off a cliff but more specifically 
i'm horrified by the length of january. 
how do the pine trees do it? just keep
going & going & going. pressing each day
into a rigid needle. i'm more
of a dogwood. i found paw prints
in the snow & followed them
to a hole in the atmosphere. a little dog
perched there like my own private trinket.
he was scared too. i told him to go & come back
in a few hundred years when i'm no longer
worrying so much.
i'm not losing my mind yet. i'm just
leaving the month out to dry.
if i found it (my sadness) i don't know 
what i would do with it.
do i want it removed? made solid?
made shelve-able? yes. that's it.
i want my sadness made into 
a paper weight so next time the wind
tears a hole in the side of a room
we'll be held in place. then 
heavy as it as, i could at least
wrap a hand around it & say 
"this is where it lives." 
whoever decided sadness is blue
was wrong. sadness for me
is red & then sometimes indigo.
blue is a sleeping color.
it never wakes up. i never wake up.
gulls gather around my bed & say
"it's tomorrow again." i refuse.
next month i'll try again.
use the paperweight to break 
a neighbor-window. crawl inside a new life.
yes. again though, i'm asking the pine trees
"how should i?"

slip

the sliver ball off my nose rose
fell off & rolled to the next town over.
i am not in control of my gorges or my cavities.
in a past life, i was a bull
or a bushel.
stigmata flower bloom opens 
in my palms at night. i hold up my hand
to shield myself from the moon
but the glow bleeds through. 
the back of my earrings slip between 
floor boards & gather in the basement
like insects. shimmy in the shells.
my uncle has two baby teeth left
in his mouth. they're small & stubby 
like grave stones. a pen cap 
can be a vessel if you're only transporting
a single strand of hair. 
i'm clogging the drain 
with my sleeplessness. i'm feeding
the lyric to the bears. 
fingernails, like horseshoes,
tossed at the floor. i was never
iron enough to survive. a piece
is always leaving the whole. maybe this is 
what it makes to make a self
& wash your face in the tiny sink
each & every day. dust is partially
little ghosts of dead skin.
i tried to take off my skin last week
& only removed my wrists. 
a head band can hold a skull together 
on those certain days. 
i hand a lover the needle 
& thread & ask him to enter me slowly
through his favorite opening.
i secretly hoped he's choose 
my ear but instead he sewed 
my lips shut with just one stich. 
the oven is on with the door open.
i'm cooking a chair for dinner.
the town over isn't a town,
it's just a pile of everything
that's passangered me.
shoes & socks & teeth.
when i wake up i'll check
for new craters on my body
& in the cold street outside. 

the night my stuffed animals came to life

the moon was a fruit snack
i plucked & chewed. in that darkness
we made a plastic fire & dipped our eyes
in black water. i consulted 
with them, we sat in a circle
in a frosted field. we talked about
gold & silver. we asked each other 
to stick out our pink felt tongues.
all the cars turned palm-sized.
no one had a father. no one had
a to morning soon wake up in. 
the night lengthed 
to the size of a quilt. took turns
singing loudly in the bathroom. 
a tooth brush wept. we all confessed
what we needed to. we all put cherries
on top. a lollipop grew from 
between the floor boards
& in the basement a soft alligator
taught his lover, an orangutan, to play oboe.
i told them all to never go to sleep.
no more night sky, just the house
& the yard inky-expanding. 
we felt our stuffing: beads & sand 
& cloud. in the kitchen,
the fridge shed it's skin & emerged
shiny & ready for anything. 
i'm telling you this because i miss 
my slippers & my beautiful potted violet.
someday i want to be shelved
& dusted like a book. will you help me
scrub the last knot out of my eyes?
we were good animals once.
with blood & ailment & useless ache.
next, i'll be sewn shut. how do you mend 
these days? i miss the moon
even though it's my fault.

birth of venus

i found a tiny woman standing
in a pale shell on the beach. leaning in,
i asked her, "where do you keep
your razors?" all the mothers 
were burrowing in the sand. 
everyone was going ancient that year.
a bath house rose where there was
once a grocery store. my skin
turned to clay in the sun. my father,
the archeologist, held a magnefying glass
up to my face & asked me to blink.
i wanted to be smashed. the woman
shook her head. she couldn't speak yet.
i said slowly, "you are a woman" 
& she frowned, crouching in the wind. 
all boys are born without teeth 
or ambition. all girls are born 
with horns between their legs.
i was neither & both. i plucked
my own teeth from the bushes. 
what did this creatute know about 
self-meanding? i brushed her hair
like a doll & told her, "move along."
set her shell afloat in the ocean
& she glanced back at me once
to blow a kiss. gods are always
trying to convert you to their gender.
i washed my face in the salt ocean
& crawled on hands & knees 
back to the grove of egg shells
in search for the right blade.
i remember my birth in great detail.
a slit opening in the earth 
& myself emerging like a spill.
my mother claims all the credit
for taking the shovel out to the yard 
but she doesn't know what it was like
beforehand when all there was 
was drumming. that night, i would
finger paint the moon & ache for
the little woman floating
far out past the sand bar. 
i hoped she never got taller & 
that her mother stayed a shell. 
in the town, boys played flash light tag.
girls bought real houses 
for their human-sized dolls
& i watch the shadows
on the floor of my bedroom
stretch long with each 
passing pair of headlights.

i miss waiting for the train to pass

rainning dusk in september.
you & me with our hands in our own pockets.
we are coming home from somewhere
as we stand behind the barbershop poll arm
holding us back from crossing the tracks.
like figurines we stand alongside 
men in long black coats
clutching suite cases like scriptures
& bubble gum chewers & people wearing head phones
the size of hotdog buns. 
the train comes into sight quickly
& in my head i list the tasks 
that will carry me to a closed door sleep.
we are taught waiting is something noble.
maybe blessed are those who wait
for the train to pass? you try to talk 
over the increasing train horn's blare
but i forget what you were telling me.
every stop, three shouts. we can almost see
the little man tugging the sound open 
from his private nest. i consider
becoming a train conductor. waiting
waiting waiting. the wheel spinning wild
beneath me. waiting easily slips into wanting
which evolves into needing. the conductor
needing to shove the people off the train.
the street people needing to cross the tracks. 
we needed to amble home & needed to fall apart 
& needed rain to swell into a downpour
just as we reached the alley way 
to our apartment. our shoes needed
to clunk on the hard wood floor
as we took them off. i needed to spend
every day in that town waiting for a train
at least once & if not waiting 
i had to hear them impossible future children. 
all three moans. pictured your mouth 
opening with those calls pouring out. 
what kind of lover was i? a train 
rushes through my ribcage & i stand 
on one side, holding an empty vase.
i am the conductor of a night train
& i pull the clamor long & slow.
i slip into the night & out again. 

pizza jukebox favorite song

i drove my car through
the key hole to reach you. you were
listening to that blinking red music again
& heard nothing of my piano-ing.
mozzerella is a love-making device
whose width can be strung long & thin
like a violin string. a boy is playing
his heart out of the roof. we should
give him a quarter for his meat.
everyone knows that once in awhile
you'll want to walk down to
the cardboard shops & a plead
for nurishment. a paper plate 
can last as long as you keep talking to it.
remind that sliver it once was a tree.
to serve is to warp in the wind.
what is your favorite song. i'd like
to fill my mouth with it until
it turns hard & round as a pearl.
we should get dinner sometime & by dinner
i mean just a slice of dirt. i want 
to plant flowers on your tongue.
yellow yellow flowers. 
the neighbor man is porching himself to death
waiting for a bite. are your pickles singing 
or was that a bird? i'm stuck
in the syrup of hating you. let's get over it
& make pieces. i have sausage in the fridge
if you'd like to start there.
how do you fold? is a quarter enough
for all the trouble. i left
my instrument in my last life
& now i rely on machines. player piano.
player guitar. ghostly visitations.
i'm dabbing the sweat from my face
with a brown paper napkin. the night itself
is as viscous as sauce. 
i'd like to dip & be dipped. 
the music is heavier than ever. 
i'm trading a tooth for it. 

garbageman 

it's my job to tie the ballons 
to the dumpsters. i come in the night
with my pockets full. i prefer purple.
purple balloons. you never let me go easy.
you lingered in the dark of our house
with your eyes like light bulbs.
my vocation filled you with fear.
you would ask, "where do the dumpsters go
once they lift from the earth?"
& i would explain, "it's not 
a garbage man's job to ask."
i breathe the balloons full & tight.
in on motion, knot their necks closed.
one on every corner of the bin.
i always peak inside before the send off.
you never know what you're releasing.
once, i saw a rocking horse. another night
i saw three bowler hats in a nest
of dead cabage. the truth is
everything can be sent away, even people.
i woke up one day & you were 
a potted violet. i talked to you 
i said, "no please. i was a good lover"
but you said nothing. in the end
every trinket is purple. i watered you
& told you i would try harder. 
i worked faster to try to come home as quick 
as i could. but you don't understand.
someone has to raise the garbage. someone has
to fill his pockets with balloons 
& slip off into the night. we don't ask
what our bodies think of our motions.
callouses on my fingers from the knots.
your petals falling like tongues.
a wilted man in a plot of soil. 
carrying you all night & saying
"see this is what i do when i am gone."
i set you in the last bin of the night.
i said, "if you can, tell me where
the garbage goes" & i watched 
the great green bin lift away. past rooftops.
past the murky night clouds. into
the nothing nothing above just to be returned
by the time the sun whistles 
again in the morning.