elixir of life

i have drank so many televisions
in the dark. sleeplessness used to be
so much more intimate.
i would crawl down a ladder 
into my mother's mouth. that was 
when my father walked the monster 
all night long. there we would
drink the elixir of life together. 
her feet like fresh stones. my eyes,
quarters in a well. i understand why
men have been strangling trees
for centuries in search of a youth potion.
i do not think we want to live forever.
i think we want the old glow. the bruise 
alive & sugared. the way each moon 
used to brush our hair. sometimes i still
wake up in the middle of the water.
i think of calling her. asking her if
she remembers the box tv. if she remembers
when the two pine trees who peered in
the window at us. if they are still ghosts
walking outside & brushing their heads
against the starscape. i follow a "90s/2000s"
nostalgia instagram page. i look at it
much more than i should. i don't even
think i want to go back. i want all of 
that smallness to be here & now. 
to be carried like a little bean in the palm
of the story's hand. i follow in the traditions.
i gulp down whatever flowers i can. an infomercial
long & stumbling. the windows, open.
my mother with a birthday cake face.
the filling, birds. the pine trees, cut down long ago. 

apple 

in the three window days
i sometimes ate apples while looking
in the mirror. i learned so much
about my face. my hunger like
a trash truck in the murky morning. 
shoveling teeth. the neighbors' bathroom
was right above me. i heard him singing.
"lord lord almighty," he said
into his own mirror. i wondered 
about telepathy & if i could 
convince him to eat an apple with me too.
there are those videos of andy wharhol 
eating a burger. i watched them
with a former lover in a museum. 
i considered once recording myself
eating the apple. immediately i closed
the phone camera. i am not that kind
of artist. this was not a performance.
it was a ritual. the floor of the bathroom
was a birthplace of many centipedes. 
once, i fed a piece of apple to the centipede. 
he told me, "i am so sorry for all of this."
i explained it was not his apology to make.
the country has made horrible choices
one after another. this place treats
its choices as inevitable. he carried the apple
to his dark place & i did the same with mine.
outside people had gotten sick of the pandemic.
wore their faces like balloons. the neighbor
had lungs like punching bags. summer sung 
hairless in the sink. i grew tired of 
the apples. i do not think i learned all 
i could. instead, i think i reached a precipice
of potentially seeing too much. the animal of
my jaw. my blood, a creek on a bear's back. 
once the neighbor said, "no no no." a long exhale.
no footsteps. he stood there. 
i had not been eating. i rushed to the kitchen.
one sad apple left. i had to devour it. 
had to find a way to share whatever grief
no matter how small, was visiting him. 
i stayed there until he moved first. his steps
like fallen trees on the mountain that peered
down on the little street. 

isle of apples

sometimes i see king arthur 
at the gas station, two iced teas
in one hand. i used to follow him, stubborn man.
i wanted only one thing, a map
to the isle of apples. i read about 
this healing place covered
in apple trees. my mouth watered 
& i started wandering in the dark 
hoping to stumble upon it. i am
not a knight or a king or noble.
i am a snake person, belly to earth
where it belongs. i give in to temptations.
every garden i enter, eden. once 
& only once i caught him. cornered 
the king on a long weathered pennsylvania road.
i am not sure what he finds here. 
we were flanked by broken-eyed houses.
windchimes sung. he did not try to escape
anymore. i wondered then how many
people try to hunt him. beg him 
for fragments of divine. of healing.
i did not even know what kind of restoration
i thought the isle could give me. i was
obsessed with the color i thought the light would give
as it fell through so many branches. ripe fruit. 
i did not ask him though to take me there.
instead, i asked, "what was it like?"
he wept. an old man now. ragged 
in the guts of the world. he said,
"it was everything you would 
want it to be." i think he is my father or
my father's father. i knew then he would
not deliver me. instead though, he removed
a single fruit from his pocket. not a shiny
storybook apple but a little fist in the dark.
he gave it to me. it was not enough 
but i received it. are great men always like this?
mirrors of something beautiful you
cannot see. i do not dream of secret realms now.
instead, i walk out in the fields. i steal an apple
from the neighbor's tree. swallow it whole. 
i still have never eaten the one he gave me. 

oil 

i put the sun in my mouth
& drive in the dark. one summer we slept
in the yard & took turns eating stars.
they left grease stains on our lips & thighs
where we'd wiped our hands. 
i parked the car in the wendies lot
& used their wifi to pull veils from 
the faces of gods. when i was
an altar boy, i got to light the candles.
the big ones were oil fed. their flames
came easy. thrashed beneath the breath
of the priest. i struggled to put them out.
wanted an eternal light to carry until
the land was blanketed in salt.
i imagined carrying one of the candles home. 
sitting it in my room. a mass held
for only me & the wall bugs. when we emptied out
my aunt's house we found so many rosaries.
i wonder if she ever held her hands
over a host & blessed it. i don't trust priests
but i do like their uniforms. when i was
going through a wicca phase i thought
of buying a robe. try on being my own
kind of holy. i have since torn apart 
any ideas of holiness. who the fuck cares
if i'm holy? i am something better than holy. 
not the flame but the oil in the guts of 
a tower. i am infinite. my grease, the grease
of the world. the fire, only dancing because
so am i. in the parking lot i lit
a birthday candle & held it until the limb
was gone. no oil. no light besides the 
ugly street lamps. these days i let myself
have as much burning as i need. i do not need
headlights. that is how much i glow. 

kissing booth

i build a kissing booth in 
my darkness. no one visits. i decide
i am raising money for a good cause.
my mouth, a piggy bank. they have
forsaken the penny & thus i will
only accept payment in pennies
from here forward. count yourself
into my mouth. i want copper.
i want a wire from me into the earth.
because the power grid is dying
i have been returning to the potato.
once i think we made a battery from one.
i buy hundreds to try & open 
just one light. someone comes from
really really far away for the kissing booth
& by the time they get here i am not longer
interested in money. i tell them 
they can have it all for free. i did that once
when i was selling my wings in a bedroom
without a window. the man smelled
like sidewalks. he was not as mean
as he could have been. we made it work.
when he was done he told me,
"i am sorry, i am stealing business."
he was another kissing booth attendee. 
i told him it was alright. he left 
out the window without any shoes.
from his shoes i made flower pots but
the flowers always smelled like him. 
i have never been good with my mouth.
could not whistle. could not yawn.
a boyfriend in high school once put
a bottle rocket between my teeth & said,
"go!" i did not catch fire. from then on
he knew i was not going to be a good wife.
still, we traded each other's eyelashes for years
until i got the courage to report him to
the council of kissing booths. he was 
forced to pay all the back fees of all
the kisses he took without paying. 
money is never enough. i used to have
a job where i almost made enough. 
i didn't know what to do with the brief
flash of stability so i bought toys.
played with them in the dim light of
my basement. buried the kissing booths
just for them to resurface in the front yard.
i didn't know what the neighbors would think.
lately i let it happen. i have a mouth & a jar.
why shouldn't i open it when i can? why shouldn't
a stranger come into my mouth 
& take his shoes off. i hope that other 
booth attendee is doing well. i hope his family
has pictures of him. that they know
only as much as they can bear. 

building the robot

the pieces come like rain.
bolts & blades. tubes & oil. 
instructions in the mailbox. they read,
"build the robot." i avoid the work. instead,
i mow the lawn. i decapitated the 
thorn weeds. i pray like i used to with
my eyes beneath the soil.
finally though the robot cannot be
avoided anymore. he throbs like a sick limb
beneath the surface of my flesh.
there are billboards that announce 
his omnipresence. "love the robot." "we are
the robot." i have simple time
dreams of searching the forest desperately
for huckleberries. their deep purple stains
beneath my fingernails. the robot
was not inevitable. in fact, i read
a newspaper story that the robot was funded
by a hand without a body. that it milks
our tongues. an endless machine. 
i cease to sleep. i build the robot. i do not
want the robot but here it is. it makes
all the promises i do not want it to make.
it says, "we are gods." my eyes well up.
the birds scatter into the dark hills. they are
furious with me. we used to speak when i
was a child. did i forget their language 
or did they stop trying to converse with me?
soon it is only the robot. i plug it in
where the television used to live. it says,
"all you need is a past." i do not want to share 
anything with it. i feed my memories 
to a turtle in a mountain pond. i look
over my shoulder the whole time. 
the turtle asks, "what are you so afraid of?"
i lower my voice to as soft a whisper as i can
& reply, "i am afraid of my hands." 
the turtle devours them for me. a favor. 
each finger, one by one. then each limb
until i am just a shaking grain. still, the robot
finds me. squeezes my face until i am
a pop of energy, then the relief of dust. 

panic room

o blender moon i have a blade for us.
with the syrup in a bottle of legs.
i sometimes try to run from my face.
there are monkeys on the side of the road
preparing for a new evolution where 
they too have video games. i lock the doors.
i lock the windows. i buy as much as i can
online. lots of notebooks & even
a box of turkish delight so that my sugar
will be blooming & lovely. the knives 
in my house are dull. the ceiling is rusted
& inhabited by the ghosts of bats. 
i enjoy having a nice panic in the afternoon
when there is really nothing else to do
with a pair of wings. i dislike when people
day "the apocalypse" as if there is only
one way all of this goes down. instead, i 
prefer quick words like "this danger"
& "this heat." in my favorite panic room
i have a picture of all of us before i knew
exactly how evil things could get. in the picture
i have worn out our eyes by looking at us.
a mirror breaks itself. in the panic room
there is only one telephone. you cannot dial it.
whatever comes is what comes. sometimes 
it is my father. often it is my lover asking,
"where are you, i have searched every ocean?"
i beg for him to join me. to panic with me
in a place where we don't have to be real,
we can just be mania. when i return i try
my best to follow in my family tradition
of pretending nothing at all happened. smile.
open the windows over night so that tall men
have somewhere to sleep. moonless night.
a playground arriving from no where.
i know what a trap is when i see it. i swallow 
the key. catch us inside & crawl into 
a pillow case that smells tree sap & hair. 

hazel rod

i have become a disciple of protection spells.
i plant a deer tooth at the edge of the yard 
where the world ends. the cattle come only
when there's fog. i hear their hooves on the roof
& i run outside to let them graze on my hair.
tragedy makes me more superstitious.
it starts with the money spells & spills into
everything else. i only cut my hair when 
the moon is full. a hazel tree grows in the closet
& i share it with no one. protection that is greedy
is not really protection. i tell myself i have 
to invite the whole street. i have to open my door
& not just talk to cows. i need to bring people
to the tree. make offerings. ask for branches.
then maybe we could all walk around with
our hazel rods. the only trouble is hazel branches can
also lead to invisibility so i'm told. i imagine 
walking around without the weight of being
seen. but i want to see the neighbor with
her barefoot rooms & her long hair. i want to see
the children chasing geese. i visit the tree.
it grows in wild cork screws. i feed it beef jerky.
a little betrayal to the cows. it is the hazel tree's
favorite though. i feel often caught between 
the world & my body. i guess that is what it means
to be living. when i finally take a branch 
from the tree i think the first thing i'm going
to do is walk out into the middle of the corn field.
i want to see if the coyotes can smell me. i want
to see if the cows follow. if, on all fours, i am
something other than a fearful animal
though i already know i am not. 

accidental narnia in the mouse closet

when everyone else had moved out
i learned to talk to the mice. i crouched 
& put my ear to the closet door. sometimes
the sirens outside were so loud that 
they intruded on our communion.
other nights we spoke. the mice told me
there was a place deep inside the closet
where everything was made of sugar. 
i watched the same nature documentary show
five times. turned it up loud to soak the walls
in a jungle. the mice became bolder in those
final weeks. i did not want to fight them.
one night we had dinner together on the floor.
i showed them pictures of us when we had 
been happy. when the ocean beat her wings 
across our backs. i drove while you read poetry.
the mice asked me, "are you going to join us?"
they wanted me to climb into the closet too.
to see the world they had told me so much about.
i hesitated. everything felt too late. too late
to be a man. too late to be a girl. nothing left
but bones & doorways. i applied for jobs.
i wept in the stairwell. the mice reminded me,
"there is so much sugar." i regret not taking
them up on their offer. the walls have changed
so much. folded & opened. i don't call you
like i used to. someone else lives in that apartment
& they do not talk to the mice. not like i did.
once in awhile i will go into my closet here
when no one else is home. i will press my ear
to the wall. no sirens. no mice either but 
the sweet sound of a door without a hinge. 
i know on the other side my mouse kin are there
eating themselves into light. 

at home test

i eat the door & then there is no such thing
as disease. from the online place a little
box comes with all the words i need to hear.
i test for mirrors in my blood. i do the tests
over & over until one comes up negative.
thank you gods for the sliver of truth in
a worm farm. when i was little we used to go
to the fields behind our house for meal worms.
not the smooth worms of our dreams but
the anklet ones with tiny crunching faces.
we used them as bait to fish for lungs. 
i drove the car even though
my feet could barely reach the pedals. a bicycle
lodged in the ceiling. a doorless house. 
we used foil to try to keep the lid on all
this breath. i am a fiend for reassurance.
someone tell me, "yes we are all going to survive."
i wake you up in the middle of a plum.
dark purple skin of the stars. you say,
"go back to sleep." i beg, "tell me i am alive.
tell me i am not sick." of course i am. in new ways
every time the sun unpeels & buries her left foot.
you are not a liar so you don't agree 
to lie. instead, you buy a pocket doctor.
his instructions say, "put him in a glass
of water for a diagnosis." i do that & wait.
he says, "you are a deviant." i sigh. i could have
saved some waiting. i already knew that part
but what else? there are not enough sand boxes
for adults. the ocean spits out a child every
full moon. that was me. my skin still 
aching without a trench. let's not get carried away.
there are rocks that bleed. there is no way out.
when i am really desperate i want to call my mom.
i don't do that though. i think that balloon
is on another planet. instead, i put my ear
to a tree. hear the water trekking up her throat. 
sometimes, when no one else is around
she will give me what i need. she'll lie to me.
she'll say, "you are cured forever now" &
for that i'll thank her by pressing a penny
into the rain-soft earth then find it weeks later
when all its shine is used up 
sitting on my forehead in the middle of the night.