self administered lobotomy

what is the point of keeping
all the worms in my skull alive?
sacrifice some for the good of the group.
i could go fishing 
in the creek the game warden stock with trout
or i could attract a nice song bird
to replace my radio. i have never been more sane.
in the morning, i spend an hour 
counting my eyelashes. at night
i count again to make sure none were stolen.
all day my stove makes unkeepable promises 
like that he'll take me to disney land or
that he'll make an honest woman of me.
there is nothing honest in my body.
the skull is thicker than i thought.
i always imagined my carapace as lobster tail.
one crack away from flesh.
the butter is inherent to the situation.
there is no dissolving without
melted slip. golden gloss.
i'm trying to fix myself. i'm trying
to be discrete. just like
piercing your own ear. i have
paper towels. i have a blue tarp laid out
in case of disaster. when was the first time
you saw something no one else did?
i saw a dragon perched on the couch 
& he was eating my crayons. an alien landed
on my top bunk. my life so far has been
a series of visitations. i want
a silver moon for my pocket.
i to unburden my lovers of 
all my buzzing. it is hard to sleep near me.
i bring tornados & frying pans.
the grease is enough to kill anyone.
my father used to pat my head & say
"you will be okay sweetie" & he lied
because i wasn't. all my hair fell out
& grew back grey. my teeth danced 
like egg-shakers. an x-ray.
i am a doctor pointing to 
what is wrong. nodding to myself i take aim
& wake up in the bathtub again. 
count my eyelashes. 

my heart inside a hot pocket

the serving size: two fists & 
only the desires you are aware of.
a futon is a futon no matter whose 
beautiful house it is. your boyfriend 
is a potter & he wanted to pinch you
into the shape of a vessel. a list 
of baby names. i'm told 
i should own plants. a palm's worth
of potting soil. the refridgerator
holds all my hope in a green wavering 
pickle jar. today i will go to the grocery store
& feel briefly whole as i buy
3 peppers for five dollars which 
isn't very cheap afterall. the peppers
were grown in a hot house.
maybe all growth is artificial.
i am the size of a lima bean. 
i'll risk it all for 
another summer. i want to soak
in a sink. wash me with the rest
of a blueberries. give your sugar handfuls.
the grass is emo & cutting itself.
my suicidal ideation has moved so far
from intent that it might be called 
dreaming. the microwave fills 
with dew. my paperplates
multiply like rabbits. children 
children children. all i want to go is 
sleep. my brother turned 22 today
& i bet he's not thinking
about hot sauce or garlic. 
the only condiment i have here
is mustard. yellow & sharp.
i've never used it. the packaging 
was ruptured in travel. if we are patient
someone will love us exactly how we want
to be loved but only for one night.
mine was a long time ago. i'm passing
the time. is it 5:30 yet? 
can i take off my shoes? am i alone
with my aches & my shoulders?
a box of hot pockets sleeps 
in the back of the fridge. 
i live my life 2 minutes & 30 seconds
at a time. wait for the bell.
open the door. i'm not trying 
to prove myself anymore. tomorrow
will be a new day. 

i built a pile of leaves to live inside

there's a foliage for this melancholy
or a least a color scheme. 
you said the trees on your street
are turning red. i stole their leaves
for a front door. what will you do
with your nesting nightmares?
i'm going to tiny-house myself
into the next decade. soon i'll be
eighteen days old & the sun's roots
will have done their work. i'll be
stuck on earth with the rest of you.
i feed on nothing but dampness. leaves stuck
to my skin. collage-girl. do you see
a man's face in my chest?
is your stained glass ripe? 
the rake in the yard snapped in half
under all the gendered pressure.
he wanted to wear his mother's heels
but now he harvests dead leaves
from the back step. a dress
is always a possibility. what do you know
about fire escape routes. i'm hoping mine
will save us from the seasons change.
we need a thicker moon if we're going
to make it without any government assistance.
my grandfather built steam engines
& a leaf stuck to his heart
before he fell off top a ladder.
very few people are lucky & we should
pin them down & search them for green.
i am prone to falling. i once snapped 
a bridge in half. you should
go on without me. my house will soon
blow away. just the furniture
standing in the middle
of Pennsylvanian forest. 
i'll be nowhere to be found. 

sleep eating 

what wouldn't you do for a mouthful 
of regrets? in my sleep i fork-knifed
a planet. i slipped milk
on the kitchen floor & left footprints
all the way back to my bed.
the lips are the worst of all organs.
we forget the hinge but without it
nothing opens. all my bones 
have diaries. all my teeth dangle
on strings. little hangmen. 
what have i done to deserve memory?
i used to keep a food journal
like some girls keep a list 
of boy they have crushes on.
i am in love with what keeps me alive.
i drank orange soda from a bowl.
got on all fours. bit chunks out 
of the drywall. sleep destruction.
scampering. can one ever be free 
of a construct? i punish hunger.
oh god of problematic disorders
let me learn to love the fat on my body.
i have no dreams to remember 
just a wanting that cuts through
from sleep to wakefulness. 
sleep driving to the store to buy
the last birthday cake ever.
no more birthdays will ever happen
& here i am. no party. to devour.
a bare handful. blue dye. 
i consumed like winter eats daylight.
steady & then only one more bite.
even washed off the evidence
in the shower. drain brimming 
with crumbs & melting frosting.
crawled back under covers
no morning recollections. no, not true.
i am pretending to not remember.
it is almost november & soon
the year will want nothing
to do with me. i set my lips
on the end table. a sliver of gold light
enters through the corner window. 

hand sewing

when i was twelve i wanted to make my own clothes.
mine always fit sideways & crumpled. 
i rectangled & hexogoned. 
my body grew in strange directions & destroyed
any noticeable shapes in me. 
needles moved through clothe 
like fingernails in cream.
we bought fabric in great sheets. every bolt is a flag 
no matter how small it shutters. 
a set of needles from the dollar store.
thin & glinting. dwindled teeth. my own teeth 
falling out of my skull & onto my speckled carpet. 
sitting at my desk i sewed aimless lines 
into clothe. barely patterns. trying to make
even stiches. pretended i was a woman
in a vague time before department stores 
& plastic clothing hangers. when i was twelve
i wanted to sew my own body. 
a skin cut from these machine woven sheets. pulled 
over my skeleton to make a girling person.
pricked my fingers. little buds of blood.
all my stiches. little crop rows.
outside, november was coming 
& all the corn fields folded inward.
in pennsylvania, winter slowly strips everything.
a hazy dress outline on the floor. dead girl.
i didn't have mirrors in my bedroom
but i had a window & i held the dress outline
to my body there. it could fit. so many stiches.
thin fabric. a house slicing wind
spreading goosebumps across my arms.
the distance between a goal
& our own fingers waning strength.
the dress, a loose sack to carry me 
to the other side of the sunset.
i put my needles to sleep in their case.

prediction 

you kept saying "this winter will be harsh"
& i would argue as if our feelings about
the impending shift were rooted in
some other specific looming knowing. 
it was november & i already missed you
the way you can miss a window in a room 
across a house or the way you can miss
an un-seeable planet. mars thumb-taced in the sky.
do we already know what will come 
to hurt us in the future? is it written
in us like the circles at the heart of a tree. 
those three days of thick permanent snow. sharp knifed wind. 
the city was a diorama we peered into
through a tall pillar of glass.
how quickly a season can invade. the year before
we watched ice skaters make dinner plates
of bryant park. this year was different. 
the apartment fell from the top shelf. 
my old jacket petaled apart. 
found a new one at a thrift shop
in flatbush. the pockets were frayed open
& i lost all my pennies to the sidewalks.
the streets turned into ribbons 
& blew wide open. not enough time.
a holiday is a kind of ledge. we saw 
bird foot prints in the parking lot.
my car, covered in ice. the street three blocks up
where the houses almost resembled homes.
long island never held me. everyone was
little bridges. i walked the dog
around the block until it became an orbit.
you watched snow out your window.
its glow in the morning a pervasive white bulb. 
how could i tell you i didn't know
what we were anymore? not as lovers but
as beings. was i just a reflection & not
the body on the other side? when would spring
save us? i was so so wrong. the winter was unrelenting.
there you stared like a prophet or a compass,
warm next to me on train rides to & from a monster.
the television whispered, "alright alright."
neighbors waltzing with chair.
forecast for three inches of snow
brimming in the brown-grey static night. 

currency 

i discovered her envelope of 20$ bills
when i lived with my grandmother.
they were soft & folded away
in one of the dozens of drawers.
her tilted wooden dresser. she was at church.
she was probably praying for me
while i reached my hands
inside the house. the blue shutters
blinked knowingly. 
i counted three pictures of jesus &
five of mary. two statues of god.
put her clip on earrings in my palm 
like i'd foraged them. smooth fake pearls
& pinwheeling trinkets. all i know about her
comes from that one morning. she folded her hands
in her lap. she prayed the rosary at 6am 
each day. she used the pink sugar substitute.
that summer i lived there i slept in the guest room.
it had been unused for decades. dust flourished
on every counter. we drank coffee together
in the rec room. bitter coffee
broiled in the old white coffee machine,
stained around all the edges.
i didn't miss home at all. i pretended
i was much older & she was my mother. 
told myself i was caring for her instead of the truth
which was we were filling the space
between our two bodies with mystery.
sometimes she walked in my room
without notice & there i'd be
sitting on the floor like a lost
piece of furniture. i stole one of the bills.
folded it & stuck it in my bra
as if she would search my pockets.
she would never go through my things
like i did hers or would she? 
i didn't know the half of her impulses.
i'm lying though, i took three 20$ bills.
i could have taken more. i wanted to.
was i greedy? i tell myself
the job paid minimum. july was
severing me. outside, even the bees
in the crab apple tree talked about my debts.
i don't know where i spent them.
we continued our patterns. i stayed up
past her & skimmed to the television 
for anything at all to watch. 
i still wonder, did she know? 

train held between 23rd & 34th st

we saw a rat the size of god.
i removed all the bones 
from my feet. the power went out
& we reverted back 
to candles. the sun, a forgotten thing.
i saw a solar eclipse when i was little.
we watched out a friend's playroom window.
you can invent memories. i am not sure
if this is one of those. watching
as a great dark circle slide across the sun
like a lid over a jar of strawberry jam.
darkness falling over a toy castle.
we're also mostly plastic. 
our parts are not safe for children.
all the "you"s i usually employ in a poem
jumped out the window & like a bird
i sang "i i i." until i was full
of fog. a delay is never simple 
in a matrix of rails. this train
eats the next train. above 
there was no more city. in the future 
i am trying to smoke on the porch
of a house in the country.
the leaves are changing. the only train
is a steam engine for sight-seeing.
the tourist in me is always hoping
for a new ticket. grasping
the silver pole descending 
from any given ceiling. 
why didn't we hold each other? what makes
another body a stranger? 
tin can full of sardine people. 
don't talk to lamp posts or midnights.
a man hummed as if we were all
harmonica columns. what will we do
when we escape? grasped for schedules.
i am already 
yearning for the past where
the sun is blotted out &
i stare at a small army. 
take me back down. i need to worship.

on leaving every poetry reading early

my feet are guilty implements.
the sidewalk magazine-glossy with winter.
i miss the city with all my body-- i miss it
despite rolling inside like
a marble. in the room, everyone's mouths
were front doors. glasses full 
& lips rushing forward. my nights 
burn themselves home.
a merry-go-round heart. whose staircase
taught you how to cry? whose
subway stop is this? not mine. 
whose fire escape?
everyone's bodies warm
with electricity. the body is
full of it. little light bulb humans.
a strong galloping wind asterisks my hair 
before i go underneath. 
i told her not to follow me,
to let me take the trains alone.
i always leave alone like this.
standing right behind the yellow line
waiting for a monster 
to encourage my distances.
robot voice humming us. traveler traveler
with a huge (empty) suitcase
& three girls eating their own hands.
soon we will all be silences
or windowsills or whatever
our eyelids do with our thoughts.
i want a nice kitchen to hover in
& at least a sofa. when i leave like this
i get to imagine everyone else
still there as we were. still aching
in a dim room. still passing
a graveling microphone.
tables turning into pendants.
it is selfish i know to want
to preserve every memory. i ignore 
change & dissolution in favor
of still lives. as long as 
we don't leave together
i can leave everyone else there
all night if i have to. 
train windows are the only mirrors.
i peer at myself 
& the row across from me.
every symmetry is a betrayal. every train stop
a little kingdom in the night.
bodies exit the train. bodies enter.
dress shoes. suitcases. 
backpacks stuffed with apples. 
a shopping bag rustling.
when my stop comes
i'll linger on the platform 
until the train 
is just a glint.

piles of leaves

i learned color this autumn for the first time
looking up at the long-legged mountains as they
blushed. every tree undressing for the cold.
i used to have a pair
of my grandmother's orange gloves. she was a tree.
i cut the fingers off. they still smelled
like rose & cigarettes no matter 
how many times i washed them. my mom had asked
"do you want any of her clothes." none of them fit me.
again, she was a tree.
today, i saw a dead tree in the forest twisted 
among the living ones pretending 
to still have leaves. my hair is turning
red & orange & yellow. the dead tree
was putting on a good show. all the leaves
are dead or dying. soon they will be brown
& coiled like dead spiders.
i killed a spider by accident below
the sink. i wanted to see him 
grow old with me. around here,
people say, "the leaves are turning"
& "the leaves are changing." 
i imagine those words used for people.
my grandmother turned. my grandmother changed.
i knew little about here
so this is not an elegy. burry me soon
just up to my ankles. i would like
to be a tree too. it is already starting.
i pluck red red leaves like scabs
from the insides of my thighs.
unlike us, the trees crave 
the naked cold. in january, through 
a early snow, they will forget
they ever had gloves. for now,
i have piles of leaves to wade through.
sometimes the leaves become
dead people's hats & dead people's gloves
& dead people' houses & dead people shoes.
autumn is not only about ending
but also the pageant there.
the dead tree laughs like a hyphen.
my grandmother's gloves in the pile.
i'm sweeping the leaves carried in
on the bottoms of my shoes
from my hall each night
to make a pile just for myself.