cutting board for meat

some of us have steak-knife aspirations.
my mother sits sharpening her set
& waits for a tow truck 
to lift the dead whale from the yard.
we used to eat pork chops
like flip-flops. i lay down 
on the designated plank where
all chicken are supposed to be quartered.
the farm spread like a virus
from the garage to the basement & up
behind our eyes. red glowing morning.
watch my breasts become 
main dishes. a fork on the bed stand.
passing the last tulip 
from mouth to mouth. i am full as a well.
i am stuffed with bread crusts 
& fever, trying to sweat out 
this radio sadness. i have tried
so hard to be edible. i have 
poured a canister of turmeric
down my throat & sang to lamp posts 
in the hopes you would see me
for what i am. you cook later
in the dim sunday moon. you eat
raw slivers. you know nothing
about my finger puppets. you wish
you could take the knife 
to my thigh. i am more than one
future platter. arrange the napkins
into a chin. the whale will make
a great stew. a potato saved
the marriage only one of us is dead.
i made a vase out of my skull
& used it for a tomato plant 
then carried it to your doorstep.
through each cherry tomato
i watch your ankles & your wrists.
all i've ever wanted was 
to be a knife stuck in a wall.
mother uses the whale bones
for soup. we cough up spoons.
you move on. you look for new recipes
& the pot boils over, musty
with carrots. the bed hardens with age.
ripening into a good torso.
who do you want me to be tomorrow?
i have enough muscle. what can i bring
to your open mouth? i have a shovel
to do the carrying.   

lessons from water-striders 

the creek is deeper than it promises.
we were only children so we trusted 
our own reflections is the warbling water.
my crooked crooked teeth. your crooked crooked nose.
rocks below have children
& those children are playing
rendezvous with the meadow ghosts.
a fish hook is waiting 
on the other side of every swim.
flyleaf lips in the reeds. fisherman 
crouching with his little tackle box 
& his little golden wedding ring.
he wants to catch an angel. slice her open
on the fire. fresh white meat. he has 
a buoy knife he loves more than 
all other bodies. he doesn't know anything
about quilting. all surfaces 
are staircases or sleeping bags. 
we learned to walk with our hands 
in our pockets simply stepping 
on the water membrane. how have
you learned to make yourself lighter?
first we'd empty our pockets
& then we'd empty our thoughts,
counting backwards & forwards.
all rivers don't lead to the ocean.
some become highways & other become 
parables. from the banks 
deer gathered & wept, wanting 
our grace. the fisherman worked 
until his bones were bare 
& only his skeleton labored.
secretly, i caught an angel
one afternoon. i wound her tight
& stuffed her in a pocket. the weight
made me fall into the water
& now i am just a minnow.
a humming body down below but 
i still have a pocket & i still
have the memory of one single leg.
i'm coming back in due time. 

smoking on the porch on Thanksgiving

we were dragons with our own private keepsakes.
it snowed & kept the family at bay.
no wars came to the lawn & no birds
feasted on each other's legs.
just the silence that ice promises.
we shared a set of mittens. my left hand
your right. the tree in the yard for dinner.
a loose tooth giving in & falling still hot
into the piling snow. not enough storm
to go around. perky queer oven.
a timer on my face dinging all day.
i was annoying & so were you. i knew nothing
about serving spoons. stole cigarettes 
to practice our mouths. red glow
of the tunnel. celebrating 
irony in a country of bad ghosts.
burning money for the hell of it
& lying "i don't have any more." crooked nose
from a mis-remembered punch.
the wishbone, missing. tracing bruises
in sharpie. not enough fine china
for all the services. thumbs on the table.
being a terrible child takes work.
we exceed al expectations & link arms 
only after everyone else 
has gone to sleep. my ghost
with your ghost. the train set aching
in its box in the attic. 
i show you the coffin i've been building
& you promise not to tell anyone else.
the secret lengths. we have no more relatives
& feel thankful. the dog dies 
over & over again. what are we going to do
in twelve years or so? 
i say, "brother?" & you respond
i with a nod & a dog-earing face, saving me
for the next morning when we both
can trade surnames. slices
of murky apple pie. forks stuck
in the dirt. 

poison garden

i planted my terrors in the warm dirt.
asked for a pathway out. 
a dead deer statues. cementing 
of the bone. limp animal. 
once, i was an aimless bite 
of deadly seed.
here grow your foxgloves &
your hemlock. wrought iron gate.
let me in let me in. let me out.
the graveyard spits bones
at the sun, rings it like a bell.
i lock my front door
three different ways to keep out
the ghosts of rabbits.
dunk my head in soil
to get a better look at hell.
it's not too bad really.
all those roots dangling down.
baby toes included. in the garden,
there are so many ways 
to die. it's best
to just close your eyes
& accept a fate. the butterflies 
turn white with sickness. 
one, escapes but dissolves 
in the fresh air. i used to be
someone who believed 
in change. great radical change.
i have grown a garden now
from my self destructions.
everything, but especially death,
is contagious. what i want
is a cure to scoop me up
& rename me. i'll put on
a fresh gender for the grass.
a thousand dead ants.
veneration for destructive flowers.
finally finally. i am so 
undone about weakness. my weak 
knuckles & my weak ankles & my weak 
eyes. slowly, even words 
pastel smear. my uncle
was a painter & he took a tiny brush
to sow my eyes & now there is
not one here to fix them.
trust a root. trust a planet.
& you will always be swindled 
out of your ammunition. you don't deserve 
my mandrake or my nightshade
but especially not my shattered tooth.
come sleep with me
where the roses still have legs.
winter is coming soon 
to tuck us all behind her ear. 

who is sleeping in my old bedroom

history is a matter of elbow room.
the thin walls of the house on grant avenue 
revealed everything about its inhabitants.
sometimes, i would put an ear
to the wall right in front of my closet
& listen to the future. 
i have nothing much to report.
the microwave had knuckles & the basement 
told half stories of discarded sweaters 
& a warped star-painted canvas.
the window faced a square of grey sky
& a construction vehicle elegized 
the slice of road it was cutting into. 
in that town everything
was in the process of leaving.
a storefront shucked its face
for another. after me, rachel lived
in my bedroom & she put her bed
where my desk used to be. the window
shrunk in size to accommodate
an unknown variable. little tac holes 
dwelled where i'd pasted my posters.
i liked the floor there. it was unnaturally 
smooth. you could roll anything
across it: an eyeball, a wheel,
a planet. what did she keep in the closet?
are my old coat hangers still there
waiting like train passengers,
hands gripping the long eternal 
metal bar? whoever is there now,
where have they placed their bed?
when they step outside into the cool 
wintering new york, which direction 
do they follow the sidewalk?
is the window any smaller?
what i miss most is 
the postage stamp of a yard. 
just a thumb's worth of grass. i never
sat there but i should have.
instead i just peered at it.
watched the blades grow tall 
& short tall & short. browning
in january. muddied with melting snow.  

level 1

in this video game
i killed the witch by paring her
into four even pieces. her soul
was plastic anyway but 
i still feel bad about it. we escaped
through a necklace of crumpled
green backyards.
my heart was a yellow tire swing.
the knife, the murder weapon,
turned into a butterfly
& pulsed out of view.
i try to be generous with 
my violence. i take it down
to the dead leaves & run
like a loose fire. 
if i could remember how to pause
i would but instead i keep walking,
looking for a glitch 
to jitter me open. the witch 
was beautiful in a way 
witches shouldn't be--
no gnarled fingers, just
a little cottage full of lies.
i have her broom & i'm sweeping
a path in the pixel snow.
the mailbox has a clue inside.
a letter from the dead
rolled up in a scroll. it's written
in a language i don't understand
so i fold it up in the hopes
one day it'll talk to me.
if i don't text you back
it's because i'm trying
to win this level & my ribs
have gone digital. my teeth 
are mesh & sifting. the witch
oh i miss her so much with 
all her torture & her containments.
she wanted only to chain me
to a pole in the yard. oh how i could
have thrived out there 
with all my image. how i could have
been dismembered delicately
inside of all at once. it isn't 
a matter of when you're used
for spellwork but when.
the console is heated with delight.
i am proud of how far we've come
in this universe of electric crops.
for now i'm going to try
to reassemble the witch
with whatever water is left
in the landscape. then i will turn
the sun off for a rest 
& behind my eyelids the dead 
will chatter selfishly.
 

edible 

the first tree we ate was a last resort.
bitter tough bark. leaves rolled 
for easier bites. the tree had always
served us well. tall & prying
the moon open slowly slowly slowly.
we'd already eaten onion grass
& gravel & a tiny sliver of a comet
we saved in the cellar for a special occasions. 
branch by branch we gnawed. splinters
in teeth. if you eat a tree you also
eat their ghost. viscous with all their years
the ghost was tough & rubbery.
we took turns aching from it.
all the memories of rain spilling 
down our throats. all the regret 
a tree can clutch to. often
i blame my hungers on some faltering
of mine. if only i had a stronger will
i could feed only on heat & letters.
down to the knotted roots. shaking soil
from the tangles before stuffing them
into our mouths. seeing one another
with dirt stuck beneath our fingernails.
a shameful circus. like a shark feeding. 
thirst-ridden roots. ghost spewing 
pulses of depth. go deeper.
go deeper into the rough. 
i wish this was the only tree
we devoured but the land still lay
empty of any true dinner plates.
i found a spoon once & hid it. 
we eat even without hunger. 
when you are sick, you can 
convince yourself anything is 
an obligation. i have to go now 
& cut another tree down one limb
at a time. i'm told the last bird
died eighteen years ago. i was 
too young to remember
but once we found a nest 
& split it between us. the song
glimmered under our tongues.
we sang into napkins
only once & then it was gone.

intimacy

you would hew me 
into your personal boat.
called me "life raft"
& i shaved my knees
without telling you.
the storm rose sea levels
like a great curtain
& i looked up at you
my plundered something.
do you remember 
digging your knuckles
into my teeth. noosing my throat
with your texture. i became
a man in your handling. 
we make jokes about
how loving men is a curse
but you knew how to fable
just as i liked it.
no one else has done that since.
there are desirable 
ways to be maimed. 
you told me you could read stars
& that one cluster
made my body, following us
like a mother. we had
to escape her & never let
her glimpse this mastering. 
a bedroom 
isn't always the lid 
of a prayer book. who were you
to pull my tongue
long as a scarf & wrap it
round your neck. 
this autumn any leaf pile
could have concealed you.
leaves float on the surface
at first but soon stick 
to the bottom of a lake 
or a stream. there i rest
letting you drift past me
again & again. at a certain 
the memory is only the memory 
& the not the people inside.
i am your boat still
whenever you need one.
i have saved room
inside my skin for your specific
hurting. tell me 
i am sturdier than you thought.
lie to me. tell me i was 
mapped first in a cluser
of stars. tell me my manhood 
is glossy & hidden
but not from you.  

several sacrifices  

i'm killing the ocean for clear skin.
a spoonful of sand. 
swallowing grit & shell. a jagged moon
broken like a wafer 
over the surface. plastic beads
excavate my cheeks for debris.
little construction workers 
sleeping between scalp hairs.
their little yellow hats. their shovels.
how does the sediment begin?
take a layer, leave a layer.
yesterday my friends traded faces
through a portal. i played hopscotch
with a freckle. free of the scabs
on my elbows, i waded into 
the sink. all pipes lead 
to the deep. a trench whispers
water's first language. 
the mirror is a lie machine.
stared at myself on the other end.
when did i start looking 
like a handful of geology?
rub the red out. rinse chin. 
my eyelashes erode into song.
take a paint roller to my lips.
no more creasing at all.
a bed sheet where a wave
used to be. clear my schedule 
& my shoulders. who is sleeping
in the shade of my nose.
little men with their 
blue beaded necklaces. 
no one can find work anymore.
i won't tell them to leave.
prying a layer back 
i find that missing tooth 
& that collar bone. i'll need them
in case i want to barter 
with the mouth in the dead tree
or the gargling ocean 
just beneath the drain. 

frog skeleton

we live in a loose-lidded fish tank.
i want the sun to be less harsh.
the can opener is lost & so 
i suck on the surface trying
to pry the word "bean" from its shell.
the earth is older than anyone has counted.
if we put our provisions together 
we'll have enough to leave water again.
lately, i've been reminiscing about
when i used to have less cells.
we were organisms with our bodies
brushing up against each other.
nothing more queer than an organelle.
biology is just a long poem. 
the tweezers in the bathroom
are designated as blood tweezers.
glass wasn't invented
it was inevitable as an opposite
to flesh. i had to tweezer-pull
a bone from my heel. the frogs
we used to be keep me up at night
with all their breathing skin.
often when my skin breathes 
i have the desire 
to leap from the water &
die on the carpet. crawl under
the washing machine & dream 
myself a new species. who is going
to drop the fish feed in the pond?
frog's finger bones are thin 
& even longer than they seem.
they wrap three times around the earth.
clutch the core. i'm jumping rope
in my DNA. a cluster of eggs
in the sink are actually future eyes.
when you blink you are
opening & shutting the cabinet.
i want you to keep my skeleton
in a glass box. donate my soul
to science. here is proof
of sadness. proof we came
from water. the fish tank light
keep me company. my shadow cast
beneath me.